Let’s be honest, failure is scary. Just the idea of failure is scary. Combine that with the fact that our brains are programmed to avoid scary things, and we have a tendency to avoid failure at all cost.
That is, unless we override that programming! …how do we do that? With a conscious thought!
But before we go all in overriding that evolutionary safeguard, let’s talk about why we want to do that. The reason, and bear with me here, we want to embrace failure is because failure is FUN!
Through Failure We Learn How Things Really Work
Before I started this blog, I had an idea about how all of this would go down. In my head I thought I would set up my site, write some inspired content, follow the advice of the professional bloggers, and the readers would flock. Easy.
That’s not how it went down at all.
Here’s how it actually went down: I set up my site. Then real life happened. Now six months later I’m still figuring it out – how to use SEO tools, how to write, how to market.
The Truth
But here’s the truth of it – that’s what I wanted! If we’re being honest with ourselves, that’s what we want every time. We want to live and learn. We want to experience life as it is. Not as we conjure it up to be in our minds.
My Thoughts
When I set out, I had an idea in my mind of how blogging worked. I had an idea about how websites worked. I had an idea about what I wanted to say and what people wanted to read. I also kind of knew how search engines worked and the role that social media would play.
It has been brought to my sharp attention recently that there’s how we think it works – and then there’s how it works. These two things are often not the same. By failing to achieve the early goals I had for myself, I gave myself a gift: the opportunity to know how things really work. The opportunity to learn and grow.
Failing to meet certain goals has been so much fun. Because through the process I’ve grown as a person and have uncovered a whole new world to explore and become proficient in.
Failure is a Valuable Teacher
Who was your favorite teacher in school?
Have a name in mind? Why was this person your favorite teacher? For most of you, I bet your answer has something to do with how they made learning fun.
The School We’re All In: Life
Life is a school. We never stop learning. Teachers are everywhere – in the people you encounter; in the songbird outside your window; in the tree you drive past every day. They’re everywhere.
Let the School of Life Be Fun
Let’s let learning be fun again!
Failure is simply not meeting set expectations, whether set by ourselves or others. We get to define those expectations any way we want. They’re completely arbitrary. So when you “fail”… so what! So. What. Instead of beating yourself up, look for the lesson. It’s always there.
Let life teach you the same way your favorite teacher did.
Failing Shows Us That Failure Isn’t Scary
Isn’t it fun to know that in order for failure not to be scary, you first have to experience it? You HAVE to fail!
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve “failed” (i.e. not met my own expectations) since starting this website. It’s a lot of times. It’s not that I’ve become desensitized to it. Rather, I’ve realized that I’ve got this.
I can fail and be just fine. In fact, I’ll be more than just fine. I’ll come out better and stronger and prepared to take on life’s next challenge.
For Example
Some of my recent failure’s I’ve just had to laugh at. For example, I just started my instagram account. My only two followers (at the time) were my personal account and my husband’s. I obsessed about the content of my posts for days.
I expected my posts to be to the likes of Marianne Williamson and Glennon Doyle who have years of experience. When I looked at it from that perspective – that I was literally obsessing over content that only my husband (who I forced to get an account) and I would see – I started laughing at myself. I was being completely unreasonable and utterly ridiculous.
Failing to post like a professional on day 1 wasn’t scary. It’s just where I was.
Failure is the Only Way to Succeed
But you don’t have to take my word for it, take it from an NBA star:
“You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed.”
LeBron James
That’s what I said, LeBron!
Failure is fun because it’s how we succeed. I think we can all agree that success is fun! Failure is often just the first step towards success. Success and failure come together to create something beautiful.
That’d be like rejecting the rose because it has thorns in it. The rose is powerful because it has thorns. We can choose to see the thorns as flaws or as a purposeful part of the rose.
Fail As Much As Possible
In my recent experience with prolific failure to meet the early goals I set for myself with this blog, I want to offer that if you want to live and really feel it all, be willing to fail.
The scariest part about failure is the idea we have of it in our minds. It’s through failure that we learn life’s valuable lessons: how life really works, what we need to know right now, and how to succeed.
It’s in rolling up our sleeves and having a willingness to get dirty that we truly experience the joy of living. Fail, my friends, fail. Then fail again.
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