Failure Is The Unpleasant Wrapper Around A Fresh Picked Growth Opportunity

What we have is now. I believe all of us have likely felt like a failure, or felt that we have failed at some point in our lives. The magnitude of the perceived failure tends to relate to how much we beat ourselves up about it. And this can make it difficult to get the distance from it and perspective we need to heal and grow.

Failure can be so sticky. It calls you back just when you start to crawl your way out of feeling bad about it. Yet somehow these iterations of crawling out of it then being sucked back, advancing a bit further and being pulled back again, moving forward once more- is often the process of us healing from it.

In failure there are typically lessons. Part of the nuance of growth, is unsticking ourselves long enough from the shame and repetition of the memory to begin to see something new. To question a different perspective. To consider a slightly different vantage from someone else, or from yourself. There tends to be no quick fix or feel better fast to this. Depending on your experience and your history, it will take time to metabolize what this experience meant to you, your feelings about it and how you can learn from it.

However I believe we start down the right path when we begin looking for opportunities for corrective experiences, or chances to make amends to yourself (or others as the situation may call for). To understand your thinking behind a poor decision you made. To know the meaning you are ascribing to this event (i.e I am a failure). And or what lead to the series of events you now consider a failure. Its also helpful to examine the consequence of forgiving yourself (i.e if I let myself off the hook, I am not taking accountability for the harm I caused). These help us to build empathy for ourselves, which is a step towards self forgiveness. Also having a mindfulness practice (of some kind, does not have to be traditional sitting mindfulness) to bring yourself back to the present can be a really helpful tool to give our brain breaks from the mind loops failure often creates in us.