Let's talk... failure

Failure… ooft. That is a big word. I’m sure it resonates with each of us differently. It’s an extremely personal thing that will mean completely different things to all of us. Just within myself I see different types of failure; a failure to be the right sort of woman, a failure with money, a failure to have the exact right fashionable clothing, and, most critically, a failure to be cool (if such a thing even exists?). That is not an exhaustive list, and it leads me to think we can pretty much fail at anything given a good chance. But isn’t failure the thing that propels us into certainty. Moving us closer to our goals and dreams everyday? To slip up or make a mistake crystallises the right choice for us. So, isn’t it time we reframe failure and learn to embrace it rather than hide from it? Hiding from failure means we are hiding from the lesson that the failure is trying to teach us. Resistance to learn the lesson means no growth for us. Sad face.

For as long as I can remember I have had anxiety and depression. And I know it seems impossible from looking at me but I grew up in the 90s when we didn’t have the language to speak about mental health. Not being able to control my breathing one day to not being able to get out of bed and shower the next made me feel like a huge failure. Especially as I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know if it was just me; did my friends experience things like this too? Or was I a social freak, someone who had to escape to the restaurant bathroom to go through some breathing exercises to be able to socialise? My anxiety and depression didn’t exist in a vacuum. They affected my friendships and my jobs and my relationships with family members. Talk about a huge personal failing!!! I was too anxious to get close to my friends, I was too sad to be present in my jobs (not that I care too much capitalism is killing me) and I wasn’t confident enough in what was happening to me to be honest with my family.

As a matter of fact, I was away on holiday with my family and my uncle said to me he was so happy to see me smiling and getting involved with all the family activities and playing with my cousins. It was extremely nice of him to say this to me but it opened up a new cavern of unexplored potential failure within me. Had I not been doing all that before? What was it like to hang around me at past family gatherings? Oh GOD. When I think about it I have been extremely anxious and depressed for years, especially when I was growing up. I felt petrified when all twenty of us sat down to dinner. I didn’t want to be asked a question about myself. To speak about myself to this many people. Terrifying. I didn’t want to get involved because I felt unworthy. It was hard to reconcile how I had been acting with how I felt now. Without the knowledge of my mental torture how were my family supposed to understand my behaviour other than rude, brusque and grumpy. My uncle meant his comment in a very loving way and he is a very very very lovely man. It meant a lot to me that he noticed the difference in my general aura. Sometimes it takes a moment of pure honesty from someone who knows you to make you release how you must have presented to others. I mean, at least therapy works aye? It made me think about the potential connections and memories I had lost with the people whom I care deeply about. Why couldn’t I communicate to them what I was going through? I felt like a failure, like an outcast. No one else seemed to be having these problems and I didn’t want to admit I was having a hard time. After many years I don’t see it as a failure anymore. I am going to therapy and working through it. I think the real failure would be having all these feelings and not seeking help. To continue to live my life in pain everyday. I would have failed everyone around me but most importantly myself.

This one example demonstrates a resistance to failure. An avoidance. A big effort to try and pretend everything was fine. I think we can all agree that failure is a vital part of life and essential to our growth. So, why are we avoiding it? What happens when we avoid it? Well… as my therapist tells me you cannot suppress just ONE feeling. If we are suppressing the feelings that come up from failure, we are actually suppressing all our feelings. OUCH. Imagine dulling all your feelings. To not have access to our joy or love because we are scared of the grief or sadness that comes with failure. I think you know what I’m going to say next - we need to sit in our feelings of failure and see what comes up. Be honest with and to ourselves. Because one day you are pretending like the failure isn’t hurting you and the next you are avoiding trying anything new for fear of failure. It's a slippery slope. You can end up becoming a statue, not wanting to make a move for fear of making the wrong one. You are missing out on life! No new friends, no new experiences and no learning. Seems like a very lonely place to me. Philosophers say you learn more through “error than confusion”. So get out there and make those mistakes! Be a failure! You might just figure out how to succeed.

The idea of perfection affects how we feel about failure. We see perfect bodies on social media, we see perfect jobs on linkedin and we see perfect opinions on television. Perfect seems pretty unachievable so why even try, right? WRONG! Thank god the idea of perfection is being interrogated more and more by society (just go and watch Olivia Attwood’s The Price of Perfection). We seem to be swinging back to and accepting the incredibly obvious idea that everyone fails. Failure is personal. Your failure can only happen to you! Give me the failure of someone you know that you think about all the time and laugh about with your friends.. (I’ll wait). YOU CAN’T. SO! We have established that no one cares about our failures except us. It's about time we started giving our failures the attention they deserve. Get rid (or try at least) of your resistance to failing, it's inevitable if you are trying to grow and move toward your goal. You will probably fail many, many times. If you sit with your failure; the embarrassment, the sadness, the grief and the guilt you can exhume all valuable learning points from the failure and move on. Move on in a more informed manner. Move toward your goal with more confidence. There will be some cases where you will fail to be humbled and even then that isn’t that bad. We all need that sometimes, don’t we! Be with your feelings of failure and talk to them. Allow them to sit a while and soon enough they will pass through and right over you. You’ll be left with all the shiny bits worth keeping; lessons, growth and clarity.

What have we learnt? Everyone fails. No one cares if you fail because they are thinking about their own failures. It's better to try and fail than stay in one place your whole life. Be prepared to grieve your failures and let them move through you. And most importantly, failure is an essential part of becoming the person you are going to be. If we all embrace failure, it might just get easier (no promises).

Love from, Lily