It isn’t uncommon for me to bring up perspective in my posts. Perspective is how we see things. It is our take on any given subject. Today, there is a lot of conflicting ideas on how to deal with something that we all go through. It is the idea of failure. Everyone experiences it in their life at some point or another. If you are a normal human being, you probably have failed at everything the first time you tried it. We hear not entirely true statements like “practice makes perfect”.
With society being caught up in its various platforms of social media where we go hoping to be uplifted only to find ourselves feeling unworthy or like we’re not normal because our lives contain failures, difficulties, adversity up the ass, and all that we lack on the inside and out because we are not as “together” as everyone else.
I can tell you that everyone else is just as messed up as I am and as you are. Ok, some of you who feel that your life is together and you are doing great, I’m happy for you. You are in a state of flow and that is great. Stay with it and enjoy it for as long as you can so that when the next ebb comes in, you will have the energy and inner strength to make it over that life hump with ease. Yes, some people actually have a healthy and positive perspective on such things as Failure, adversity and personal lacking.
Society has tried to fix and prevent the pain of failure, the disappointment of failure by removing any and all types of competition. The problem with that is a little adversity in a child’s life offers an opportunity to grow, learn, and mature as a human being. As with everything, balance is the key. The right amount of competition gives a person, not just a child, something to work towards. It gives a person regardless of big or small something to aspire to and when we reach success we are rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment which offers the individual a healthy view of self which contributes to a healthier state of being. They started to give trophies for participation which diminished the value of the trophy which leads to an unhealthy and eventual feeling of dissatisfaction with life and can contribute to depression. It takes away that feeling of accomplishment through the success of reaching a goal. Taking away the sense of accomplishment or achievement kills the drive to try.
Without the drive to try, the slightest failure can be devastating because the sense of achievement has never been felt and therefore one doesn’t have any comparisons to look forward too. Failure and achievement go hand in hand. when there is no challenge or chance of failure, there is no challenge. Without a challenge to keep us going, we become complacent and board and then depression, low self-esteem, and a low sense of self-worth develops. One of the other side-effects of not being challenged with adversity or competition or failure is the development of a sense of entitlement which is not healthy either. It has created a whole generation of compliant, unsatisfied, unhappy, unfulfilled people who are unable to look at themselves and within themselves and take the blame for their choices that ruin their lives. You know the little things we think, say, and do. Our perspective on anything in our lives or of the world around us determines how we cope with things like “Failure”.
For many of us, it was the competition and the “Ridicule” after not being the best that was the damaging part that needs to go. It needs to be replaced with healthy ways to cope with failure and NOT getting the trophy. It would be great if teachers in school would keep a healthy competition going and then teach the winner how to be gracious and the “loser” to recognize that failure is not only acceptable as a human trait but is there for us to gauge our own progress and development. You see, success is measured differently for everyone. Not everyone will take the same amount of work to get to the same place. We are all in different places in our lives and where a person is at on their journey of life does not make them a failure or less than someone who is in a seemingly better place in their journey.
For example, there is a lot of strength and honor learned by someone who comes from poverty to earn $10,000 for school as compared to an individual who was given $10,000 by their parents, loved one or organization for school or whatever. When you are handed things you don’t have to work for, you don’t learn those life lessons and you don’t learn how to achieve a goal or the satisfaction of failing at something and working hard at it to BECOME good at it and the sense of accomplishment that comes the day you reach that goal and you are now an expert in doing it.
Another thing that can warp our perspective of failure is how society is so objectional to the success of others and when a person who works their ass off to achieve something is put down for that small achievement because others are so worried that the person will think positively of themselves and they might actually become Narcissistic. In my observation, it seems to be quite the opposite. The real reason people are quick to point out faults instead of praise someone for their success or achievements is that those who feel the need to point out faults and flaws are truly afraid of what the success of others says about their own failures or lack of feelings of achievement. For many of us including me, when we are standing in the spotlight of someone else’s success it shines a light in our own mind that illuminates our own accomplishments, failures, and overall lacking such as that brought on by sheer laziness or a lack of motivation.
Growing up with my family, I’ve grown to feel more comfortable around others who achieve more than me or greater than me because those types aren’t so wrapped up with the need to point out all that is wrong with me everytime I achieve something or succeed at something. It also gives me room to be more myself and creates an environment that gives me the room to expand and grow as much as I desire. That simple thing of not putting so much focus on my accomplishments no matter how big or small they are regardless of positive or negative attention, I feel at ease enough to simply just be my authentic self. Not everyone’s authentic self is narcissistic and assholeness. But because of the warped sense of success and failure in today’s society, Mediocre is the only acceptable level of achievement and in my opinion, striving for mediocre is not a good way to be the best you can be at whatever you want to DO.
I believe in taking pride in what you do even if your best truly is mediocre. I have things that my very best effort will never reach more than mediocre, while some things I try, I’ll never be able to do them well enough to be considered mediocre. Then there is a thing or two that I do very well. But for the most part, most of the stuff I do really is no more than mediocre doesn’t mean that I’m a good or a bad person.
Keeping in mind that Failure is a tool to help us learn and become better at something. If one doesn’t get caught up in the fact that the attempt failed, one can learn from that failure such as what the mistakes were so they can be corrected and another attempt can be tried. Do you remember the old saying, “try and try again”? Just imagine if you didn’t try to sit or stand as a baby. What would have happened if you didn’t try at all to walk or what if you tried to walk and failed as you were sure to do the first time you tried to walk?
If you would’ve given up as a baby after failing to just stand up and walk and run and all that right away and decided that it was too hard to learn how to walk, you would never have learned to walk. You would be dependent on a wheelchair and other people just because you gave up and refused to learn to walk because you failed the first time or even the first few times. It is the same with everything in life. Before you say you CAN’T because you failed one or twice trying to do it, learn from the failure so that you can improve your technique or your game.
Everything in life that we experience is experienced through our PERCEPTION of the experience. Failure is not the end, it is the beginning of success through the learning process. Don’t give up just because you failed.
Try and Try again because practice makes perfect. Manifest your Dreams.
“Failure is a tool to help us learn and become better at something. If one doesn’t get caught up in the fact that the attempt failed, one can learn from that failure such as what the mistakes were so they can be corrected and another attempt can be tried.” I wonder how many parents explain this fact. I had loving parents, but I learned this on my own. I believe “nature”, what we come into the world with has something to do with how we handle “failures.” Failure isn’t always the end, or the beginning. Sometimes it the steps that are required for one to get to where they want to be in life. People who are overly critical in an attempt to build up their own damaged egos haven’t learned to embrace their own strengths and that is sad.
Sunflowercrone, You always have a nice take on things. I’ve recently read in the book Lightworker by Sahvanna Arienta which mentioned the ego. More specifically, it mentioned there is a difference between a spirit guide and our Ego and how to tell the difference between the two. To summarize, a spirit guide will always be uplifting while the ego is negative. Thinking of this in terms of ego and not embracing one’s strengths, I think the negative talk of the ego makes it difficult to see one’s own strengths because of the ego’s nature of negative inner dialog that we’re often brought up to believe is our inner way of staying humble. However, in terms of ego being that negative inner dialog, I believe that we need to not listen to the negative and start listening to our higher self which understands what our true value, skills, and needs are that are known from a place of love. Kyle Cease refers to it as one’s heart. I have to view it as my higher self. It takes some shadow work to wash away the negative grime left behind by our cynical or negative ego that tells us that our failures define the whole of who we are when in fact that is merely ego’s negative self-talk.