The trouble with failure…
Failure… How do you handle your L’s? How do you observe those around you take them? Do you find ways to celebrate them? Do you apply a litany of analysis to it in order to make it make sense? Or are you the type that understand sometimes things don’t work out and your back to trying, playing, and creating the life you want to lead?
When I tell you it is a fight to get to the last one, I am not even playing. I am soo grateful for the souls in my life who are this type, who demonstrate the necessity of crying, taking in the loss, and moving forward, not like nothing happened but allowing the past to be the past. In theory this is something I am wildly great at, in practice I am as graceful as a freshly born baby giraffe with executing the move on approach. Oh and the mess that I make fighting to get there. The part of letting the past be the past, not to ignore it, but to recognize it has happened, it is done, and spending time there is only disrupting the present. I feel like we live in a society and culture that tether us to our past mistakes and wish to parade them around, reminding us of our shortcomings at every turn. Be it credit, be it a bad job match, be it an old relationship, those L’s are very much stamped on us and our “identity” who we are incapable of anything more. And then the ways others love to stick it to you, to fling your past misgivings, any changes that you make might as well not matter. The conditioning of it all becomes so much, and really does nothing more than to add to the many challenges that exist in our day to day life.
There are so many different ways to approach it. And there are so many different choices and help, and tools, and ways to manage the process of dealing with the impact of failure. It is so overwhelming. But sometimes its just sitting with the feeling. Not trying to justify it, to excuse it, to give it a meaning or add any value to it. Sometimes you just need to sit with the fact that something you put your time, effort, energy and intention into didn’t work out. And that’s it. its so hard. The ways in which we’ve been conditioned to solve problems is sometimes the thing that prevents us from actually accepting things as it. Sometimes, in my opinion, all the things we do to apply a balm to the things that hurt, actually prolong the process, and avoid the actual emotions that need to be felt when something doesn’t go well. None of this is easy by any means. But does it create a bigger cost, and far more long term issues on our emotional memory bank if we don’t actually allow those emotions to flow?
