And no, it's not the F word. It's the word that's far worse to me--Failure.
Social media is the biggest culprit of this and we all know it. We still use it. But there is this sense of artificiality that comes from seeing people living picture-perfect lifestyles. However, in reality the rich are broke, the happy are depressed, and the successful had plenty of failures. Only recently, we started hearing about them. That's why I am going to get my failures and insecurities out in the open.
~~~
In school, we are given grades based on our work and we all know the letters A, B, C, D, F. Interestingly enough, the worst grade used to be E, but parents kept thinking it meant 'Excellent' which led to some very happy students and very frustrated teachers. So, the school boards decided to change it to F.
Certain cultures (mine included) will tell you that the real grading system is A, C, F, F, F. There was this constant pressure to be the best at everything you do. I'd grow up hearing "Did you know that Danielle got into the honors class at her school? Her best friend is actually the third cousin of Elon Musk and she is going to be working with him at SpaceX next year" (This didn't happen, but these were the type of stories I'd hear). And as a kid who'd see how impressed others were, I'd go 'well, I have to be that level of perfect too'. I'd think that I can't do something unless I was the best at it, so I wouldn't give my all at anything. My logic was simple: if I don't put in my best, then there's no definitive proof that I'm bad at this thing. If I give it my all and fail, then I'm a failure. Piano lessons? Quit at 13. Singing lessons? Quit at 15. Swimming lessons? Quit at 7. But the most important question is: did I give it my best?
No. The answer is no.
When it came to doing things I was even remotely interested in, I always froze or quit. Of all the sports in high school, I liked volleyball. It didn't involve too much running and the camaraderie was tempting, but I never joined or even tried to play it in P.E. The constant thoughts of 'what if I'm bad at it? what if I let everyone down because of how horrible I am? what if they laugh at me?' deterred me from even admitting I liked it.
Fast forward to college, I had friends and family pushing me to start a food blog. Everyone mentioned my talent for cooking and at first, I was intrigued. Then, I decided not to do it. Can you guess why? My fear of failure. With something that I love as much as cooking, the pressure and potential of failure was so terrifying because then it'd be like a sign saying 'you thought you were good at this, but you actually are horrible at this. This is your proof".
Post college, I took a risk and started a business. I finally have the ability to use the F word to tell you that it failed. However, it took starting (and failing) this business to learn something so valuable about myself and our society.
We see in social media all the successes without the trials and tribulations of getting there, and we glorify these successes without glorifying the failures. We see the happy couple with the picket fence and don't know that the wife spent years convincing her husband to go to rehab for his alcohol addiction. We see someone pose on a 'first class flight' but not them walking back to economy or crying at night about how lonely they are. We see the hilarious stand up acts, but not the clips of them being booed off stage. We see the façade not the reality that got them there and we end up defining success as what that façade is.
That's one of the reasons why I wasted so much time being afraid of doing everything, because of how I viewed failure--in my culture, in my upbringing, in my society. Failure was the monster in my closet that'd creep out at night when I'm trying to fall asleep and remind me of how worthless I am, how others are better than me, how I shouldn't even try cause I know I'll fail.
Now, after endless self reflection and guilt (and therapy), I realized something incredible. Something that changed the way I view failure.
Failures are successes of unintended objectives. What I mean is that even when we fail, we gain so many crucial lessons to take with us. We didn't intend it but that's what happens. When I failed at my business, I constantly berated myself for all the wrong I've done. However, now I know what not to do if I start a business again. Now, I learned how to manage finances, use a variety of new software, and handle difficult clients. Now, I took a lot of knowledge with me that I didn't have prior to my business. I failed in growing my business, but succeeded in gaining more knowledge. I guess the E for Excellence made sense in a way, because it is the lesson of it that leads us to excellence.
So yeah, I guess my dash of advice is to let go of the pain of your failures. Ease the pressure and weight from your shoulders and know that you did do what you were able to with the information you had available at that time. You went through it all and you're still standing today. I know it's easy to just say it. I mean I still have those doubts and panic attacks, but the first step is recognizing when you have the thought and challenging that thought. That's why I want you to do what I am doing now--write down what you gained and learned from each of your failures, re-read it to yourself and be proud of yourself, and go do one small thing that you were afraid to do because you thought you'd fail. Be sure to give it your all like I didn't do.
In the words of Eloise Ristad, “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
Comments