Recently I have been thinking a lot about failure, sounds bleak I know, bear with me. A lot of change is amongst us, the nation is seeing the great resignation, people are looking for new adventure, we are looking for the first time in a long time to put our happiness, desires and mental health first. One thing doesn’t seem right though, one thing is continuing to stand in the way – the words on everyone’s lips – FEAR OF FAILURE.
Fear is its own topic completely and that I shall give its own blog and ramblings to because that is a never-ending topic to explore.
Failure though is a big cloud that sits above us, I would say all the time. Well certainly for me, even when things are going well and feeling great there is always a little rain cloud nearby to keep me grounded and remind me that honey it could rain at any time.
When thinking about failure though I have two questions that have been going round and round in my head recently;
- Is it failure if, we just get straight back up?
- We know that ‘failures’ are lessons, we need ‘failures’ in order to grow, so why do we so desperately try and avoid it?
Why are we striving for something that doesn’t exist? Perfection.
I/we have become too scared to be human, to be and feel vulnerable and to take risks.
Putting ourselves on pedestals of perfection when in reality it’s completely ignorant to ever think we have it all sussed out. Which is also the joy of the journey and learning.
It’s quite frankly exhausting living in this continuous tug of war between what ifs and yeah buts…! No we don’t like rejection in any sense, after all self-worth is the paramount human need however by continuously feeding this need, we are jeopardising our own progress (more on this another day!).
Failure only seems bad because the brain tells us to avoid it because the feelings we are immediately associating with it, based on assumptions, previous experiences and learnt behaviours. What if we had a word with ourselves and rewired the process of failure?
Babes, when you are walking down the street and you trip over a bit of curb, how many of us laugh or smile to ourselves? Just because we have tripped, we haven’t become a failure at walking. We haven’t failed human movement.
Apply this to your journey, babes you have just tripped up. You haven’t failed anything, you will know to be extra careful in that area next time, you will know what’s coming, you will be better prepared. You get back in it and carry on.
You learn, you grow, you experiment.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And babes if the cloud decides to rain that’s fine, remember nature thrives with water.