It's Okay to Fail

Failure is a part of Life. Intellectually we know this, but yet we still try to avoid failure at all costs. Avoiding failure means we play it safe and don’t put ourselves out there. We miss opportunities to grow and experience new things. We miss out on the opportunity to be our best selves. What we don’t realize is that this too is failure—it is just failing ahead of time.

Do you want to fail moving forward or fail by standing still?

“Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” - Gena Showalter

And guess what? It doesn’t feel good to stand still. We know deep down when we are playing it safe. It feels like something is missing, we feel stuck. There is a desire in each of us to keep growing, and I believe it is part of the human condition. When we are not growing, we are not living up to our true potentials. It’s enduring unease deep within us. We try to escape that through busyness, alcohol, or movie-binging.

The worst thing about failure is what you make it mean.

Actually, the worst thing about failure is how you will feel. That sinking pit in your stomach of humiliation, embarrassment, disappointment, and shame. These feelings come from our thinking, what we make the failure mean. We make failure mean all kinds of things. I am dumb, I am lazy, I am disorganized, I will never be able to change, I am incapable, I can’t do it, and the list goes on. Over time, as we keep telling ourselves these things, we start to believe they are really true and that shapes how we show up in the world.

We all do this, but I have good news…

You get to choose what you think.

Really, you do. It may not feel like it most of the time, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Why does failure have to mean something bad? Marcus Aurelius (Stoic/Roman Emperor) wrote: “ A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it”.

When it comes to failure I recommend choosing what you’ll make it mean ahead of time. Even writing this blog I have fear; fear of what you will think, fear of no one reading it. But if either of those things happen, that won’t be a failure. I can learn from any critiques and use that learning to create a better blog next time. If no one reads it, I can still choose to be proud of myself for trying. I know that the only failure is really just not writing it at all.

Think about something you have been afraid to try. What will you make it mean if you fail?

It’s time to reframe failure.

Let’s just decide right here and now that failure is not bad. What if failure is AWESOME?! Isn’t it?

It means you tried, you put yourself in the game, you showed up... even though you were afraid. You were courageous. Showing up with courage is awesome in my book.

Failure is also about learning how not to do something. When we first learned to walk, we failed a lot. But you don’t see babies giving up after they fall once or twice. They build muscle and learn how to balance through their failures along the way. Failure is HOW we learn, it’s how we grow. Growing/learning, that is also pretty awesome.

Get out there and fail already!

So why are you afraid to fail again? If failure is really awesome and you get to choose what you make it mean about yourself, it is in truth nothing to fear. So fear not, and fail again and again.

Measure your success by your failures and watch how truly amazing your life becomes.