Failure Isn't What You Think It Is

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hey everyone and welcome to this week's podcast episode. Thank you for being here and for being a part of the creation of this through your questions and sharing your journeys. It means a great deal to me. It reminds me, when things get hard and I don't know what I'm doing and I have no idea if this is making a difference at all, and when I feel like a failure, that the journey is what matters. In fact, I want to talk about failure today because coming to see it and change my relationship with it has been one of my own personal journeys that has been, honestly, pretty intense, and so, just in case failure and the fear of failure has been a difficult part of your journey, I hope to share at least a couple of things today that will be helpful, especially as we put failure in the context of journeys, which is why we're here.

Speaker 1: 1:00

So, to start off, when we talk about failure, there are a lot of emotions that come up. In fact, if you take a moment right now to note for yourself what comes up for you when you think of failure, what feelings, what words, what experiences, chances are good that there is a lot of discomfort there, a lot of heartache, maybe even a lot of shame. There could be anger or anxiety or sadness and maybe more. Why is that? How is this one thing able to create such a range of difficult emotions? And what is failure anyway? I mean, we can talk about how it's not meeting a desired objective and that sort of thing, but what I found interesting is I was researching for this podcast. So many of the definitions that I found defined failure not for what it was, but instead for what it wasn't, in this case, success. Over and over and over, I found the definition of failure stated as a lack of success, and oh boy, that is loaded for me, partially because of how I'm coming to feel about lack and scarcity and partially because I think it just deepens the difficulties that we have with the idea of failure.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Let me just start out by saying that the fear of failure is very real, it is very normal and it is very primal. Failure touches some of our deepest core level fears. Failure in certain contexts threatens not only our safety but our very existence. There are times when failure can actually mean death, and that is what our brains are trying to protect us from. However, the vast majority of our experiences today, perhaps differently from ages past are not life and death type situations, but our brains, which love to be busy and engaged in meaningful work, continue to scan for danger, and failure tends to hit a lot of those marks. It can have a social impact, it can result in punishment, it can be used as a measurement of personal value and it can be the cause of many difficult and emotional experiences. All of these things can feel very dangerous, making failure itself feel dangerous. And this may all be happening on a subconscious level. We may not even know that we experience failure as dangerous.

Speaker 1: 3:29

But what is it really, and how can we adjust the way that we see an experience failure so that it can actually be useful? First, it's important to know that the definition of failure in our society is actually pretty variable. I see this all the time as a teacher, I see it as a parent, I see it as a business owner. What might feel like a failure for one person might be a rousing success for another. I had plenty of students who felt like anything that wasn't an A was a failure, and I have others who squeaked out the 60% to pass, that celebrated like it was Christmas, with so many variations of what the word failure can mean. I think it might be helpful to put it into a context that is relatively stable, so that we can have some kind of structure to build a conversation around. So we'll put it in journey terms.

Speaker 1: 4:16

In journey terms, failure comes as a natural and crucial part of the trials and temptations phase. Now, as a quick reminder, the trials and temptations phase is where we are working on coming to know the unknown. We have stepped across the threshold from the world that we knew and are faced with experiences and requirements, but we don't know how to handle it. And yet is the operative word. This phase is the space where we learn, we grow, we develop skills and abilities, and it requires us to try things that we've never done before, to learn things that are foreign, to act in ways that are unfamiliar. A natural part of this process is that we have to try all these things. We have to shoot that basketball, or try that math problem, or stifle a cutting remark that we would normally allow to slip. But since we don't actually know how to do those things, we have to go through the process that allows us to understand what success looks like for that thing. Take shooting a basketball, for example the first time someone shoots a ball at a hoop, they're probably not going to make it because they don't know how. If the definition of success in this case is to get the ball into the basket, we would consider that a failure.

Speaker 1: 5:31

But in terms of the journey, what we consider a failure is really just one thing it's feedback. You tried something and it didn't work. In the process of learning, it means that you tried it in a way that wasn't what the task required. Going back to the basketball, maybe there wasn't enough force on the ball, or maybe the angle coming off the fingers was off, maybe there was too much power and an overshot. All of that is information, and information is neutral. Let me say that again Information is neutral. There's no judgment, just data. When I did it this way, this is how it turned out. If I don't like how it turned out, what could I change in order to create a different outcome?

Speaker 1: 6:20

Failure is feedback in a journey, but unfortunately, because of our primal fears and the primal fears of others, we start to see failure as all sorts of things that it just isn't. Failure isn't a judgment of you as a person. Failure isn't a measurement of your worth. Failure isn't an indication of what will happen in the future. It is feedback. The power comes in deciding what do we do with the information that that feedback gives us. Do we take that information and let it teach us? Do we look at it and understand that it is showing us ways that we can adjust or do things differently if we want a different outcome? Do we see it as an attempt to get closer to understanding and developing the talents and the skills that we're going to need, or do we take it as a confirmation of our own fears of who we are or aren't as a person? Do we use it as a weapon to keep ourselves small and supposedly safe? Do we use it as an excuse to quit the journey early because, deep down, we don't want to do the work Again, the information is neutral.

Speaker 1: 7:40

This action done in this way led to this result. But if we're having a reaction that's other than neutral, that gives us the opportunity to look a little deeper and see what's underneath. These feelings that come up around failure are signals that there's something ready, something ready to come up, something ready to feel, ready to let go. If our reaction to failure brings up fears and emotions, the really powerful work is beginning. This is the actual work we need to do. This is where healing actually happens, and it's something that I don't think we talk about enough these thoughts, these beliefs that we have run deep, and until we bring them to the surface, healing is impossible. I'm not going to go too deeply into that, because in the next podcast I'll be talking about healing, but just keep that in mind these signals that come up are opportunities to heal. But let's come back to this idea of feedback, because it's also important that we understand that what we currently perceive as failure may actually end up being a gift that job that we didn't get, or that relationship that didn't work out, or that game that we didn't win. It may feel like a failure, like we've lost something that should have been ours, and it can hurt, but I would venture to say that all of us can look back on our lives. It's something that we perceived as a failure at the time, but now, from our current vantage point, we see the gifts that we were given through that failure.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Our son loves basketball. He loves it, and if you are a parent, you know that it is such a joy to see your kids find the things that they are passionate about, and he is passionate about basketball. This was a recently discovered love for him. He played around with it a little bit when he was younger. He did junior jazz and that sort of thing, but wasn't it really driven to practice more than just the once or twice a week that the teams got together? Something happened, though, that flipped a switch for him. I don't know what it was, but he started wanting to play so much that he was willing to wake up early and make other sacrifices so that he could get a ball in his hands and practice.

Speaker 1: 9:58

He tried out for the ninth grade team at his school, and he didn't make it, but instead of letting that get him down, he actually went to the coaches on his own and asked how he could improve so that he could be working on it now in preparation for the tryouts that would happen at the high school the next year. The coaches were actually really impressed with his asking, and when another kid decided not to join the team, a space was opened up and he was able to be on the team. He took the feedback and he used it, and it reminds me of the story of Michael Jordan, who, by the way is the goat when it comes to basketball, no matter what other people may say. Some of you may have heard this story, but Jordan tried out for the varsity team at his high school when he was just a sophomore. Clearly he liked basketball, he was good enough to be trying out at that level, but at the time he was 5'10 and he struggled, according to the coach, with shooting and defense. He didn't make the varsity team and instead they put him on the JV team so that he would have time to develop those skills.

Speaker 1: 10:59

And it can be hard for some of us to believe that Michael Jordan, this mind-blowingly good basketball player, wouldn't just make every team that he ever tried out for. I mean, he's Michael Jordan, but what we forget is that there was a journey that he had to take in order to become the Michael Jordan that we came to know. Not making the team was a reality check and, as his coach would later say and I'm quoting him here there was no doubt that Mike Jordan could handle the ball, but his shooting was merely good and his defense mediocre. Mike Jordan was 7 or 8 inches shorter than Michael Jordan would be only 5'10 at age 15. And at least one of the assistant coaches had never even heard of him before that day. If Jordan distinguished himself at the tryout, the coach said it was through his supreme effort. In other words, looking at that quote, michael Jordan wasn't a great player.

Speaker 1: 11:54

Yet upon finding out that he didn't make the team, he told his mom and they cried together. But then she told him what journeys are telling us in these moments that if you really want this, you're going to need to work harder. You're going to need to change what you're doing. You're going to need to change how you're doing it. The feedback was that his shooting wasn't great. His defense was mediocre. Those are the things he would need to work on, and he took up that challenge. Not making the team, something that could easily be considered a failure, was exactly what he needed to drive himself to work hard enough to become the Michael Jordan that we would all come to know later on. If he had somehow made the team, his drive to improve, to work hard, to put in the effort, might just as easily have been absent. He may never have become the player that he was capable of becoming. We actually see this pattern play out in other people's journeys as well, in both big ways and small. The current dilemma speaks of being exiled from his beloved Tibet. In this way, and as hard as it may be to believe, he is able to see the gifts in what proved to be an intensely difficult experience. I'm going to quote him here, and this is somewhat of a long quote, but it beautifully demonstrates the point, so bear with me. He says At that time, speaking of the events that occurred in 1959, in spite of our earnest efforts to coexist, the Chinese authorities did not, unfortunately, respond positively.

Speaker 1: 13:28

The very survival of the Tibetan identity was at risk. So it was decided that, in the interests of our land and our people, that I should leave Lhasa. Initially I had some fear and hesitation about doing this, but since the Tibetan people had placed their hope and trust in me, I knew where my responsibility lay. In the same way, when I was hardly 16, and even though I was ill-prepared, I had to take up the political leadership of Tibet. Sometimes I say that at 16, I had lost my personal freedom, and at 24, my country's freedom was lost. Subsequently, I became a refugee.

Speaker 1: 14:05

The tragedy of Tibet has yet to be resolved, but my becoming a refugee in India brought with it many hidden blessings For one. The moment I was able to cross over from Tibet to India on March 31, 1959, I realized the value of freedom. Since then, I have been the longest staying guest of the Indian government, enjoying every possible liberty. In addition, india has provided me and those other Tibetans who managed to escape the freedom to preserve and promote Tibetan identity and our culture of peace and compassion, and to share them with the entire world. Most important I have enjoyed in exile the freedom to pursue my spiritual development. Even as I have tried to take care of Tibetan affairs For many decades now, I have had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with leaders of different religious traditions, scholars and scientists. These new friends have enabled me to understand more clearly the state of humanity and the ways in which I can contribute to a better world. So for him to hear him speak of it. Being exiled from Tibet gave him the opportunity to learn and grow in ways that would not have been possible had they been allowed to stay in Tibet. Again, it's not that the journey caused the Chinese government to create discord, force them out. Instead, the journey was able to take the situation and create opportunities for learning and growth, opportunities that he can look back on and see as gifts of that experience.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Nelson Mandela similarly speaks of his many years in prison in a way that reflects the same truth. I'm drawing here from the writing of John Sadoski. He said when sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, the future president entered as a fiery, hot-tempered, militant freedom fighter, considered a dangerous terrorist by the white ruling party. The man who walked free nearly 26 years later was entirely different, measured and moderate, possessing the thoughtful calm and a masterful negotiating skills of a seasoned statesman. For most of his life, mandela had indeed promoted brute force as the only way to confront white dominance in his country and was unwilling to renounce violence. And yet, upon leaving prison, he was a completely different person. The tempestuous radical of the 1960s slowly learned to be reflective, and those years of reflection changed his life. By his own account, nelson Mandela considered his time in prison as the turning point of his life, the event that allowed him to grow into the leader he was to become.

Speaker 1: 16:42

In his jail cell, he took the time to think in ways he had not before about his past, about his desire to become a better person and about the need to eschew anger and vengefulness. He was able to achieve, in his words, the most difficult task in life changing yourself. When I read that quote, it really struck me. Mandela described this change to Oprah Winfrey in 2001. He said Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization, and I was generally busy from 7am until midnight.

Speaker 1: 17:15

I never had time to sit and think. As I worked, physical and mental fatigue set in and I was unable to operate to the maximum of my intellectual ability. But in a single cell in prison, I had time to think. I had a clear view of my past and present, and I found that my past left much to be desired, both in regard to my relations with other humans and in developing personal worth.

Speaker 1: 17:45

So with these examples, and any of your own that you may have thought of, perhaps we can give ourselves a little more grace when it comes to failure. Inside of what can bring up a lot of emotion, a lot of hurt and a lot of difficulty can be the pathway toward actually becoming the better version of ourselves that we're capable of. Sometimes, the brutal honesty of this feedback the feedback that we're just not there yet is exactly what we need to hear in order to break free of our own misconceptions and self-deceptions, to not become complacent and think that we're everything we could be just because we made the team or got the job or whatever the task was. Failure is feedback. What we do with that feedback is where we allow or don't allow the journey to work in our lives, and in the end, that is what really matters, because life is a journey and it's time we start living like it. I'll see you next time.