The Illusion Of Failure
Perspective Is Everything, The Most Important Lesson, Living Free
The idea of failure being undesirable is an illusion of conditioning.Curious
Curiosity’s role in failure:
“The difference between failure and learning is a simple matter of curiosity.”
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“Don’t be so lost in reflection that you forget to embrace the current moment. Curiosity can help you improve from a failure but when you’ve completed your reflection, take the lessons and move on. Dwelling on a failure (past) will prevent you from embracing the now.”
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“Treat the first attempt as the first step. When your first effort doesn’t achieve the desired result you must believe the seed is planted. It will flourish if nurtured.”
Conscious
The most important lesson of failure:
“Our ability to come back from defeat, overcome failure, or get up when life knocks us down depends solely on the extent to which we understand that the purpose of life is to discover who we truly are — to discover our spiritual nature, not our materialistic nature. Meaning, all that happens in life is testing us on this very purpose.”
Source: Garret Kramer
Change
Living free is nonresistance to failure:
Failure is neither good nor bad. Like everything in life, it just is what it is. What determines our experience is the lens through which we view failure. If two people can view the same experience in opposing ways, the idea of failure being undesirable is an illusion of conditioning. This isn’t to suggest that positivity around failure should be forced either. That too is conditioning. The goal is to allow what arises to be as it is. The sooner you accept what happens, the quicker you can align with the present moment. From there you can make decisions that are true to you.
Don’t just take it from me, here’s how one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Roger Federer, approaches failure:
“When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to fully commit to the next point, and the next point after that.”
Source: Jake Humphrey
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His message is simple: Treat every moment as the most important one and when it’s over, fully commit to the next moment.
I’ve failed many times. Some failures I’ve carried with me like a bag of rocks. Others I should have paid more heed to. There are marks I’m still not meeting, but I’m working on it. That’s all that can be done. It takes patience and repetition to undo conditioning and live freely in alignment with what is.
In my experience, having an outlet to practice failure can change your relationship with it. For me, that is physical exercise. Failure is inevitable in that environment. There’s always another rep or set to be performed so you have to move on quickly if you want to give it your best shot.
How can you practice failing more?
Live Free,
Niall
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LVN Stories
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Thank you Niall, for this new mindful piece. It was a healing read!
As I was reading, I thought about Zig Ziglar who said, "Failure is an event." And yes, it's done; it's already behind.
Sometimes it is not easy to name failure. It stacks up and reaches levels of unavoidability, and that moment turns out to be the breakthrough moment. It is not easy to recover, but you have no other choice... success is also just around the corner. Both failure and success are actually best buddies.
Hi Niall,
This is helpful for me, as I tend to be a melancholic, brooding type. One point I want to make about reflection is this: I have found it to be very powerful in my healing journey.
A writer I admire, Natalie Goldberg, said that sometimes we have to go back to a memory and compost it. We may write about it dozens of times, even if in our journals. It's because, in her view, that we still haven't reached a point of either resolution or acceptance.
I think I fall into that category. I am heavy on reflection. I think it's one of my greatest assets as a writer. I know there needs to be a balance with it, but reflection helps me go deep. Helps me recognize metaphors or understand myself and the world and others more fully.