Lessons Learned Through Failure

I saw this post today and it really rung true for me.  I love the positive message that so many have not really embraced and understood that failure is a part of our experience and life and it is inevitable.  It is also a gift that can allow for more joy, strength and love in.  Thanks, Sandi Tuttle for this message.

By the way, how appropriate that Sandi is joining me today on Seeds of Love Radio to talk about her radio show, “An Average Woman in a Superwoman World” and how we can all find our own Superpowers.

Failure Isn’t Terminal

We live in such a success driven world now.  Everyone has to be good at everything.  Kids have to go to school, participate in multiple sports, play musical instruments, perform community service activities, and walk on water.  Daily.  Every minute of their young lives is scheduled and scripted.  Toddlers have to have a CV and excellent references to get into nursery school.  The Right Nursery School.  Because if they don’t, they won’t get into a good college in 16 years and they will be failures.  Unbelievable pressure on such small, fragile beings.  They have to fear failure before they learn how to spell it.

Adults have it just as bad as the kids.  We have to be able to succeed in business (without really trying), while maintaining a perfect household, a perfect relationship, outside activities, volunteer work, sports and religious activities.  All while maintaining a perfect size 6, a perfectly white smile, a perfect cholesterol score, and the perfect family.

No wonder we all walk around like ticking time bombs.  We are all so consumed with being perfect that the thought of failing is enough to make us swallow our own tongues and spontaneously combust.  (Making sure that we do so in a socially responsible manner of course…)

I am here to tell you that living for 57 years has taught me a very valuable truth:  In most cases, failure won’t kill you.  There, I said it.  I actually dared to say it.  Failure isn’t Terminal!

Sure, if you are hanging off a cliff by a rope, and the only thing that is keeping you alive is holding onto the knot at the end, and you fail to hold on, it will probably be terminal.  Most of us don’t find ourselves in that kind of situation, so I think my statement is still valid.

After failing at marriages, jobs, hobbies, relationships and parallel parking, I am still alive.  I am still standing.  OK, I still can’t parallel park.  But each failure found me alive the next morning.  And I had to figure out what to do.  Most of the time, the only thing to do is to get up and try to do better the next day.  Sometimes, you learn a valuable lesson and find strengths inside yourself you never dreamed were there.  You may find that you were saved from years of pain and frustration, simply by failing and being shoved off in a new direction.

You may fail at a marriage, but you may find the mate you were meant to have once you have healed.  You may get fired from your job, but you may find the job that you are much better at, with people you like and respect, and you won’t be coming home every night with a headache and a pain in your gut from the stress of being where you aren’t a good fit.  You may have to accept that gravity happens and it isn’t a friend to your figure.  You may look in the mirror and see that you failed to keep the Evil Aging Fairy at bay.  But in the process you find that your rich life experiences have helped you become a beautiful person and a valuable mentor to someone in need, regardless of the crow’s feet near your eyes or the grey in your hair.  You get the idea.

Giving our children the deep seated belief that they can’t fail, that they must fear failure above all else, that there are no winners and losers, that they are always going to be good at everything,  is actually giving them a big, fat hall pass to failure and a long, hard, painful fall.  People need to know that they will, eventually, find something they aren’t good at, and that they will survive the revelation.   People need to develop the ability to bounce back from failure, to learn from mistakes and to find ways to make their own successes in life.  They need to know that failing isn’t the worst thing.

If I could give my children anything from my decades of screwing up on this planet, I would give them the gift of freeing themselves from the fear of failing.  I would let them feel just how freeing it is to know that, as a human, they will fail from time to time, and it won’t be terminal.  I would spare them the years and years of being the monkey on their own backs and getting in their own way, trying to be perfect.  I would hand them the keys to peace of mind, by letting them know that failing will only hold them back if they give it the power of life and death.  I want them to know that if they fail, they will wake up the next day and will find another way to make their dreams come true.

Unless, of course, they are hanging off a cliff holding onto a rope with one hand…

Sandi Tuttle is the host of the Blog Talk Radio show “An Average Woman in a Superwoman World” (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sandi-tuttle).

To access archived replay of this show, click here.