The misunderstanding that ‘if I fail at something, then I’m a failure,’ is one that held me back for years.
Believing that if I fail or don’t get something right the first time, then it means something about me, has stopped me from doing so much.
Making failure mean that ‘I’m dumb,’ ‘I’m just not that intelligent’ or my all time favourite, ‘I’m not good enough,’ has really gotten in the way of me creating the life I want.
Realising the opposite, that failure actually means that I am making progress, and nothing more, has allowed me to get out of my head and get into action.
Expecting everything to happen perfectly in life is unrealistic.
- The first time I cooked indian food, I sucked (ask my husband!)
- The first time I sang, I was out of tune.
- The first time I coached someone, I was mostly silent (which is sometimes what’s most powerful).
But in all of these ‘failures,’ I learnt something.
My failures are the path to success.
How could I possibly improve, without making mistakes?
How many times do babies fall over before they learn to walk?
They don’t just give up and start believing they’ll never walk.
They don’t make falling over mean anything about them. They don’t even think about all the times they fell over. They just get up and try again.
If they did make falling over mean something about them, like ‘omg I’m never going to walk, it’s not meant to be. I’ll just lie down forever,’ they would never learn to walk, because they’d be too in their thinking about being a failure.
If you could drop the meaning you put to your supposed ‘failures’ and see them as part of your growth instead, how would you show up differently?
