Full disclosure: recently someone I love and respect posted a comment about me having failed at something. That set me to thinking about what failure looks like; here is what I came up with.
1) One might fail if they let others dictate what the best path for them might be and allow their dreams to wither and die.
2) One might be a failure if once undertaking a task they do not give that task all they have to give.
3) Certainly one could consider themselves a failure if they have an experience and neglect to learn from that experience be it a happy, or a not so happy experience. Both can be learning experiences. That failure compounds itself if one does learn a lesson, then when the next opportunity rolls around to implement the lesson, they simply ignore what they learned and fall into the same hole again.
4) And the greatest way to fail is to simply not even try. How can we succeed unless we jump in and give it our best shot?
Failure is a state of mind most often adopted by ourselves about ourselves. When another person attempts to label an attempt as a failure, the effort is misguided because they have no idea what we are going to do with that lesson. When we keep in mind what my friend and gong master Linda Lintvedt says “I cannot fail, I just keep learning,” we place ourselves in a position of power to grow from every event, every attempt, and yes, every “failure.”
Where is the idea of failure in your life? Find out how to identify your own self-defeating thinking by reading It’s All About Me, the Involved Observer.
