Been meaning to talk about this for some time. Having a lazy
Sunday in Paris recovering from jetlag, so here’s my moment.
How do you deal with failure?
Sometimes we have a hard time starting a new undertaking
because when we have a new idea sometimes all we can see are all the failed
attempts of our past.
If you’re anything like me, chances are you have had the
experience of starting a project with lots of gutso and somehow losing
motivation, interest, or being carried off by something new before you bring it
to completion.
Or what about things that aren’t necessarily projects but
steps toward self improvement? Don’t you hate it when you start on something to
better yourself and you somehow fall off the horse and never get to see that
transformation you envisioned?
Sometimes you fall off the horse and get back on and fall
off again and get back on, but after that happens so many times, your energy
can start feeling depleted and so can your morale. Then you start to hear that
voice that says, “What’s the point?”
and you get that itch to just throw in the towel.
I’m kind of sick of reading things about this and just
hearing the same old “Dust yourself off and try again” messages. There’s
something deeper than just having the perseverance/motivation/resilience to
start again. I’m sorry, but sometimes your will power just isn’t strong enough
to carry you through the pain of past failures.
There must be something more to this than just talking
yourself into trying again.
Case in point:
Here I am in France again and I know that as soon as my
husband and I begin to meet up with his friends and family, I’ll be faced with
that old language barrier that I hate. I’ve been trying to improve my French
since we met 2 years ago. I took it in school, but never used it and now it’s a
steady project for me.
It’s tempting to think about the first time I was here a
year ago and how intimidated I was with all the quick conversations and nuanced
jokes going on around me that I didn’t even speak a word. With the exception of
ordering at bakeries and restaurants, I completely relied on him for
translation. I didn’t do any of the practicing I planned on. I made a few jokes
here and there with his friends, but mostly I felt like a total failure and yet
another lazy American visiting a country without speaking the language. Ouch!
So here’s my big realization on this and all other ongoing
projects and new undertakings.
If we make perfection the goal, we are unknowingly setting
ourselves up for failure.
Sometimes we begin something with this idea in our heads of
total transformation. You know how it is, dreamers!
Instead of doing this, why not make growth the goal? If we
say to ourselves that we’d like to see this amount of growth in this amount of
time, we can celebrate our milestones. We can congratulate ourselves on gradual
improvements.
This isn’t to say that we should forget about mastery and
transformation, but this is a far more gentle way to approach what is, after
all, a lifelong process. The lifelong process is learning. Whatever we are
doing, we are learning. When we make growth our goal, when we commit ourselves
to process, we can never fail. This, in long term sustains our energy, to
continue even through set-backs and to start again if we ever fall off.
We cannot transform through negative self talk. We must
develop the muscle to speak to ourselves in a gentle voice. It is a practice. A
great way to start is by making growth your goal, not perfection.
Growth is the never ending process of your life. Commit
yourself to that and failure will be irrelevant and whole lot less scary.
I encourage you to add the simple goal of growth to your
thought process as the new year approaches. Not perfection, not total
transformation, just growth. Sweet, simple, gentle growth.
How do you begin again, Joy In The City readers? What is the
secret of your growth process? I’d love your thoughts. As always, thanks for
reading.
Check out that leap!!!!!!
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