Are you #failing? Not performing. Not being enough. Not doing enough. Lacking #success. Not achieving. Not reaching. Not succeeding. Disappointing. Unfulfilling goals and targets and objectives.
Failing is sad and frustrating and discouraging. It is heartbreaking sometimes. It is even the end of the world sometimes. Except, maybe, just maybe, it is not.
I failed multiple times before. Like, MULTIPLE times. I failed exams and even one class. I failed at least three big times at deciding what to do with my life. I failed at relationships. I failed to be the best version of myself countless times. I failed at maintaining friendships. I failed at eating right all the time. I failed at being kind all the time…
I know when I’m failing, because this dark feeling of emptiness starts to eat me up from the inside, starting with my brain, usually, and making its disgusting way down to my heart. Like an unwanted parasite, it makes me say horrible things, to people around, and to myself as well. It tells the world that it’s its fault and myself that I’m not good enough. My innate free spirit becomes flat and low and caged. It becomes imprisoned in it’s own self deprecating thoughts.
But, that is not me. I am not my self hatred thoughts.
So then, if I assume my thoughts are not me, could it mean that failing is not actually failing? Maybe failing is just a thought…
I know that failing an exam is not a thought ; it is based on someone’s idea of what 100% means. But, maybe there is more to it than crying and having parents yell at us. Failing simply means that either we did not understand the subject very well, that we did not put too much effort in it, or that the expectations were unreasonable. Instead of diving head first into the pool of despair and start filling it with uncontrollable tears of rage, maybe we could observe in what category we could attribute the failure to, and then, take the actions needed : try again maybe, change subject perhaps, modify our trajectory perchance?
Actually, isn’t failing only a construct of the mind? On other’s mind sometimes, but on our own mind, often! Think about it… Who sets the expectations for what success should be or what relationship should look like or what hair SHOULD look like? It’s just us identifying with societal norms!!!
But, we don’t HAVE to identify with any definition.
Maybe if we just tumbled our perspective upside down, we would see failure in a totally new way. Maybe failure is, in fact, meant to be. Maybe failure is just a way for us to reconnect with our goals, our purposes. Maybe it’s a way for us to re-focus on what’s important, truly important. Maybe it’s some higher power’s way of telling us that we took a wrong turn at the fork and now we just need to re-calibrate our GPS.
Maybe failure isn’t failure. Maybe it’s just life.
Hugs,
Andy L.
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