In last week’s blog, I talked about how failure is valuable to me. I concluded that failure teaches me how to succeed. My success is really determined by my willingness to look at every failure and make a conscious effort to learn from the mistakes I have made. This requires of me the willingness to embrace not only the experience of failure but the idea of failure. This reminds me of the question that we look at in Deeper Connections…Crisis or Opportunity? If I am focused on the opportunity attached to everything that happens in my life, then there is really is no such thing as crisis.
And yet; one of the great fears we all struggle with is failure…why?
Almost all of us were raised with the idea that our personal value is attached to what we do and how well we do it. And, we know that we have value if people acknowledge us for what we do. When I was a child, I was a good boy when I did something that was expected of me, and, I was a bad boy if I did not do what was expected of me. I learned that doing what someone else wanted me to do brought validation and not doing it brought recrimination. One of those experiences felt empowering and the other felt deflating. Considering that all motivation is about how something makes me feel, I learned quickly how to feel good about me and how to feel bad.
When I was a child, I loved it when my dad came to watch me play hockey. I was a talented young hockey player and he would often brag to his friends and peers about my exploits on the ice. Of course, I was always within ear shot and would just revel in his praise. However, there was one game where I received a ten minute misconduct penalty for swearing at a referee. My dad was less than pleased with me. On our ride home I had to listen to him lecture about what an appropriate attitude and behavior looks like and sounds like. He concluded his lecture by saying that he was disappointed in me. That statement really hurt and left me feeling like I had failed my dad. I did not want to feel those feelings again, so, from that moment on I became very conscious about what would please him and what would not. I learned how to play the game of people pleasing and the rewards that came with it.
The great struggle of our lives is coming to terms with our personal value. My underinflated ego tells me that I am not good enough and that I have something to prove to people day after day after day. It tells me that I do not have value; so, the idea of failure is unacceptable and the experience of it is proof that I do not have value. The feelings that accompany those experiences are often devastating and we will often do anything to avoid any possibility of feelings those feelings again. For many of us, this need to be seen as good enough in the eyes of others narrows our social life into a small, confined circle of people who’s expectations we believe we can live up to.
My ego is so determined to do it right, to get it right, to be right and to be acknowledged as someone who is competent, wise, and accomplished. My underinflated ego has a difficult time admitting to making mistakes or having made poor choices that have been the cause of pain for others. It is my failures that have taken me to the brink of disqualifying myself from being a teacher of personal development. In the past, I convinced myself that those poor choices, mistakes and failures disqualified me as a credible expert in my field.
Over the past few years I have actually come to believe the opposite. That in fact, it is my failures, mistakes and poor choices that qualify me as a teacher and leader. It is my willingness to embrace my imperfection and humanity and learn from those experiences that have brought understanding, insight and wisdom. And, having experienced some of those failures I can easily identify with others that have experienced the same failures and be empathetic to the pain they experience.
There is a phrase in one of my closed eye exercises in Deeper Connections that says, “The ultimate lie is that I have to be perfect to be loved. When I embrace my dark side I am not perfect, but I am whole. If that is true, then my goal is not perfection but wholeness.
There is freedom in knowing that I do not have to do it right all the time, that I can embrace my failures knowing there is purpose attached to them.
As this year unfolds I know there will be more mistakes, more poor choices and failures to come. I want to embrace them for all they are worth because, I am not perfect, but I am whole.
How about you?
Terry
