What is your current relationship to failure?
At a young age, most of us learn to see failure as something bad, something to avoid at all costs, something to be ashamed of. These judgments compel us to hide our failures, make excuses for them or ignore them altogether. And- what’s worse- is that failure or the mere possibility of failure stops us dead in our tracks. We stop taking risks, become more cautious and limit our choices to only those actions that have the best chance of success. We end up playing a small game.
What if we related to failure as fertile ground for learning? What if we appreciated failure as a gift, as an opportunity to grow and change and explore new things? What if failure opens up the possibility of meaningful success?
Don’t get me wrong. Failure can feel like total crap. It can hurt-a lot. That’s a very real experience that should be honored. And? In failure there is so much beauty in courageously knowing it, surviving it and learning from it. Consider that failure gives us access to a path forward that we may not have even seen before.
So maybe failure is something to celebrate.
