So Much Happier Blog
Dealing with Failure
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”
One of the things we all spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about is, “Am I good enough?” This is completely normal, but it’s also one of the main producers of angst built into the human condition. The other great worry is, “Do I (and will I) have enough?” Years ago I heard a lecturer mention these two questions as those to which all mental and emotional pain will reduce. In my work and my wanderings, I have found this to be true. Both questions are absolutely pivotal to the experiences we have and want to have in life, and they are perennial. At no point will we be able to escape these two questions, no matter how good life gets. And one of the concepts that gets right to the heart of that first question is the concept of failure. What is it, how do we define it, and most importantly, how can we avoid it? Please God, let us avoid it.
Instead of learning how to deal most constructively with these worries as we grow and mature, we often find that our greatest influencers, our friends and family members, pile onto them with their own baggage—much of which was inherited from others in their lives. A vast amount of information about (not) being enough and having enough collects in our subconscious minds, and becomes the compass for our life decisions without our even realizing the problem. Which is that others have defined our sense of self and our ideas about our potential, sometimes so thoroughly that we will fight for this vision of ourselves and the world as absolute reality.
Unfortunately, because of their own beliefs about themselves and the world, parents often drill into us that it isn’t safe to fail, and that failure can be one of life’s greatest horrors. Now in some situations, this makes complete sense. Consequences are all about context, and if you live in a time and place where there really is intense scarcity to grapple with on a daily basis, and just surviving requires balancing on a razor’s edge, then this actually makes a lot of sense. We learn about what’s acceptable and good in any given culture through both observation and direct teaching from those around us, and survival requires our absorbing the rules of play. And by the way, much of human history really has been marked by the experience of struggles for survival in a harsh world. However, not all of us are actually having this experience today. If we’re not, the wisdom of behaving as though we are becomes truly questionable. But how do we undo the deep programming we’ve absorbed throughout our lives that can keep us locked into endless, circular existential worry about being enough and having enough?
I guess this week I’ve decided to go for the big questions that underlie the entire personal development sphere! And while I can’t solve all problems in a short blog, I can give you the main branches that I think can define a successful path forward, keeping in mind that these are highly reductionist. In other words, just because the broad outlines can be stated quickly doesn’t mean they are simple and can be done quickly!
The first branch is giving yourself permission. There may be many aspects to getting to this willingness in all the areas of your life, but ultimately, you are the only one who can decide that you should be free to live a happy life that expresses who you truly feel yourself to be.
The second is extending yourself the love and respect that all humans deserve, the acknowledgment that we are all potentially good and perfect at some level, whether you call that soul or inspiration or genius. If you see yourself this way, you have what you need to invest in your joy, your learning, your constant betterment in the ways that you yourself define. In this distraction-clogged world, clarity can’t solve everything, but it’s a fantastic start and a powerful compass as we make our daily decisions.
As you contemplate giving yourself permission, here are a few things to contemplate:
Your parents probably did the best they could with what they had, including their natural abilities and their own built-in baggage, even if the best they managed was pretty terrible
Parents, if conscious and sober, constantly bounce back and forth between their hopes and their worries for you. This can make them seem pretty nuts when you’re small! They want you to be enough and have enough, but they worry that if you stand out too much, your life may be much harder
They themselves were probably taught that most of us don’t have the luxury of failing, because if we do, it will be the end. We’ll be finished, we and our families will die, and all will be lost. Even if they wouldn’t phrase it this starkly, I promise you that these beliefs are in there
Everyone is carrying around So. Much. Baggage. From what has been passed down unconsciously for countless generations throughout human history. I wouldn’t have believed how much until I started Tapping and finding it all starting to stand out to me in startling detail
If they had had better teaching, encouragement, and better opportunities, their lives could have been wholly different. Do you think humans deserve these things? Might you?
So few people have had the luxury of time and enough opportunity to do the inner work necessary to consciously differentiate between what is truly them, and what is the muddiness passed down to them by others. But because of recent centuries of technological innovations, you may be better able to carve this out if you choose
Only you can choose to stand for the best of humanity and do the necessary work to wash off the past and everything that isn’t really yours.
If you decide to give yourself permission in this way, know that this is not something you will do only once. It will need to be a daily decision you make as your life continues to evolve and change. This might seem like a burden, but the sooner you come to accept it, the more you can build this pivotal habit.
Here are some thoughts to get you moving in positive directions as you begin to live a life in which you take your knowledge of who you really are and want to be and put it into action:
If you do assume that you are good and worthy of your own investment, what would you need in order to get beyond the limitations you’ve absorbed from people and from life events? While not everything can be planned in a linear fashion, some analysis of what you need is crucial to finding resources
Specifically, what holds you back from the things you secretly desire?
Where can you find information and other help that would move you through and beyond these impediments? What work will you need to do on the inside?
You may need to address the aftermath of difficult experiences in your life that have shaped your concept of self. Are you willing?
How might you rethink your concept of failure for the modern world and your own endeavors? Is there good that can come out of failure? Seek out autobiographical information about people you admire and find out how they failed before or after they succeeded, and how that changed them. How do others handle failures in ways that become constructive?
How do you personally define failure? Is a mistake failure? Or is failure only a word for something whose value we have not yet been able to see?
Be willing to ask yourself again every day what you need and stay flexible as new answers arise.
Failure can remain one of our greatest fears, or it can become a natural feature of life on Earth that may never be pleasant, but can become a powerful force for our learning and progress, as well as that of others with whom we communicate our experiences. Unfortunately, in order to see it this way, we will need to go up against a massive amount of programming and the constant opinions of others. It can be done, though, and it has the potential to yield untold dividends in freeing you from harmful and unnecessary limitations.
When You See It, Believe It
“The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
The world can get pretty crazy, pretty overwhelming, and it can be very hard to know who to trust when it seems like there's an endless parade of people and businesses constantly—and loudly—vying for your attention. The stress of the constant stream of small decisions required to navigate through your day can be exhausting. Here's a simple trick we all probably know, but it bears repeating as an aid in making good decisions: Rely on what people do, not on what they say.
In the context of private relationships, this means that, though we all think and talk about many courses of action (some with great enthusiasm), we won't end up following all of these to successful completion. We all have to make value judgments in order to land on decisions about what to do with our limited time, and this happens in an ever-changing medium of context. While talk will tell you what people would like to do and experience, only their actions will reveal what they are willing to work and sacrifice for.
Some people's value judgments will be easy to understand. Others' will seem erratic and inscrutable to you. Still others' will be reprehensible in your eyes. It simplifies life and reduces stress to align yourself primarily with those whose actions you can mostly understand and approve of ("mostly" because let's be honest—no one is perfect, and everyone's viewpoint is slightly different based on the cauldron of experience, good, bad, and ugly, that has shaped them). While we can't expect faultless reliability or other flavors of perfection from anyone, we can expect that interactions with some people will feel good to us because they're fun to be around, and a good match for some of our most important values. Others won't. This matters. But if you're not also watching their long-term actions and allowing those to educate you about this person, you'll miss all the best indicators of where they're actually going.
Predicating your life on someone's potential rather than on who they actually are in this moment will open you up to a world of hurt and disappointment. I believe that people have boundless potential, but a happy life requires that you learn to choose relationships with people on a similar enough wavelength that you can love and enjoy them as they are now. By all means, challenge yourself to appreciate and love people who are outside your current comfort zone, but don't expect to live peacefully if you've allowed a whole bunch of people whose actions betray wildly incompatible values into your inner circle.
In a business context, you're looking for something similar—how does the business treat its customers? How do you feel when you interact with it, respected or played? Are its sales pitches showing you value that might help you and inviting you to participate, or seeking to manipulate you and your emotions through pressure and control tactics? How the business and its representatives behave is more important than the words, which may turn out to be acutely self-serving, just as any single person's may be.
As you move through your life, I hope you'll let the actions of others inform your actions, and that you'll find it a lot easier to make healthy decisions for yourself this way. It can cut down on the confusion in making all the judgment calls that make up a day in a modern life. Anything that provides clarity and greater ease so that we can all be less stressed and have more time to live out our purpose is definitely what I'm after! Feel free to comment below on how observing others' actions has helped you, or would have had you managed to do it!
Mr./Ms. Independence
“Independence is happiness.”
Following Maslowe’s breadcrumbs, we’ve now arrived at the area of needs related to esteem. Now that we’ve taken care of basic physiological needs, safety, and love and belongingness needs, he postulates that we will become interested in seeing our sense of self-worth reflected back to us from the world around us. One of the achievements we long to feel that we’ve earned is independence, which allows us to know our own strength and our ability to stand alone. While few of us prefer to feel that we must remain alone, being confident that we can handle what comes up in life is an important part of feeling like a competent, whole adult. If it seems that we must always be relying on the support of others to make our lives run, the human spirit within has a tendency to resent the lack of freedom—even if it is we ourselves who refuse to do what is necessary to move toward independence.
When we have done the work to feel self-reliant, the confidence that results can form the basis of endless avenues of growth. Being reasonably sure that we can produce results that consistently avoid complete disaster, we become willing to take some risks, learn by doing, take on adventures that challenge our limits. People who have fulfilling lives have usually acclimated themselves to stretching beyond their comfort zones to some extent in following their desires and goals; this helps to keep life interesting by refreshing our perspective and encouraging creativity. Desire and creativity are natural hallmarks of humanity. If harnessed toward worthy goals, they are the most potent fuels we have behind our journey toward self-actualization, the highest level in Maslowe’s concept of personal evolution.
If we lack the confidence in our own competence and ability to rely on ourselves, we will find it very difficult to get anything done. Nothing kills enthusiasm like the conviction that our efforts are doomed before we’ve even started! The enjoyable journey toward something we’d really love to create becomes incredibly arduous, if not impossible, if we think it’s impossible to arrive. If procrastination is something you struggle with, you’ve likely skipped some steps in the process of building your sense of independence. If you take a look at what’s missing, you may find that filling in the gaps is just a matter of giving yourself a break from blame and worst-case scenarios, realizing that you just need some practice, and devising a simple plan to get it. If your confidence in yourself is very low, you may need to start very small and work up incrementally, which is fine. Whatever works to move you forward is worth doing; since it’s natural for us to have desires and use our creativity, feeling stuck in a rut is never going to be enjoyable.
The growth of independence is a natural part of human development, and most of us do gain some before adulthood. Children who are loved, supported, and encouraged by their parents to challenge themselves appropriately throughout childhood will naturally build confidence in their abilities. However, there are some obvious things that can go wrong, for instance: If a parent is overprotective, the child may not be allowed to be challenged enough; if too dominant, the child may not be allowed the space to develop her own judgment and opinions; if not loving and supportive enough, the child may never feel safe enough to accept a challenge and try it on, as the idea of failure can seem disastrous if you don’t have anywhere to land; if too demanding, the child may feel that they have far too much to do already without adding elective risk in pursuit of a personal goal.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you may need to imagine a parent for yourself that you didn’t have. What would the most skilled, loving parent advise you to do in order to build your own skills and confidence? When you look back, what do you wish your parents had done (and not done) in helping you to gain independence? Most of us can come up with some answers here without too much difficulty. Chances are, you’ve thought many times in your life when considering your family, “Why couldn’t they have just…” Once you have some ideas, you can use that imaginary parent as inspiration, brainstorm yourself about what you think would help you, or ask a friend you trust to help you come up with a few small steps you could take to get used to taking manageable risks toward something you want.
If you had the overprotective variety of parent, you may need to just practice taking risks at all, of any kind, like asking a stranger for the time, or taking a slightly different route to a familiar destination. If you had the dominant parent, you might want to start writing in a journal about what you think, and what went well each day, as well as what didn’t and what you might do better next time so that you can develop your own voice. If your parent wasn’t loving and supportive enough, then you need to build the habit of being more loving and supportive of yourself, and gather kind and caring people around you so that you can feel that it’s safe to fail here and there, and ok to take time to recover when necessary. If you had a demanding parent, you may need to practice scaling back on busy-ness in order to create space to try some new things, and find ways to combat your judgmental inner voice.
You may also need to find a coach or a cheerleader who will take an interest in your process and share the journey the way the best possible parent for you would have done. It’s also a great idea to get advice from an expert in your area of interest, whether in person or in book or recorded format. This can help shorten your learning curve, which can make this process seem more likely to end in success, and thus, more fun. As you gain experience and understanding, you can become more bold. Keep in mind that most of us grow more quickly and easily by leveraging positive reinforcement—some kind of healthy reward for small victories, whether it’s a bubble bath or a celebratory dinner with those you love. It also helps to share our ups and downs with others in some way. And for many, thinking about ways in which this learning process might help others in the future can make the process more fulfilling.
No matter what childhood you had, chances are you emerged from it feeling like you missed something or other that everyone else seems to have mastered. We often tell ourselves that we’re hopeless, even broken, because of these missing pieces. This is clearly not an approach likely to lead to growth and happiness. If you can isolate an area or two in which your natural development may have been arrested, even small movements forward in those areas can yield significant returns in confidence, because these movements remind us that reaching a distant goal may be possible after all. We need to know that change and growth is possible to feel like we’re really alive. Do yourself the honor of spending just a little time on considering what you need in order to feel more confident and independent, and I think you’ll find that your horizons broaden such that life’s prospect is suddenly much more appealing.
Money, Honey!
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
Continuing to follow along with Maslowe’s concept about the needs we must take care of before we can really thrive as a total human being, in this week’s blog, we’ll take a look at another aspect of security: Your ability to make enough money to support yourself and your family. We’re not talking here about your ability to live the most abundant life possible, as that will be for a later post. This one will be about how to create the feeling that you can always handle your basic financial needs.
Your feelings about making money, saving money, and spending money are shaped most profoundly by what you were taught experientially by your family. If you saw your parents and other family members struggling to make and have enough money, then you most likely learned that making money is hard, and that not having enough is something to be feared. If you watched their fortunes go up and down, you probably came away from that experience feeling that money is fickle, and one can as easily lose it as gain it. If you were often told that your family couldn’t afford the things you wanted, then you may have learned to resent money as a concept altogether. I’m sure you can see that these attitudes that so many of us learn about money are not at all helpful in our quest to feel safe and secure enough to pursue the life goals that most excite us.
With these attitudes in tow, we are far more likely to talk ourselves out of taking even small risks in moving toward our goals. We will tend to move through life with a sense of fear and pessimism about our possible monetary outcomes. We are likely to feel that we’re not equal to the task of providing for ourselves and those we love during changing times. All of this will sap our energy and enthusiasm for life in ways it’s hard to fully comprehend until we’re able to finally find ways to transform these beliefs and attitudes.
As far as monetary skills, some of us are lucky enough to have been taught some of these at home. If you did learn some basics about balancing a checkbook or budgeting, for instance, then you may have built some confidence around your ability to handle money. If you were allowed to participate in discussions about financial decisions, then you probably built more there. Those of us who were very fortunate may have learned about investing, or how to run a business. It’s also possible that you learned some things at school that were relevant to finance. You may have had classes in junior high or high school that touched on the basics of earning and using money. You may have elected to take classes in college about business and finance. All of these create advantages that help us to feel competent in the financial arena of life. Unfortunately, many of us come through our schooling with little to no practical learning about financial matters such that we lack confidence and a sense of literacy in this extremely important area. If you didn’t learn these early, you may still be struggling to learn them now, but there are resources available to help you at every turn if you are willing to look and learn from them. It’s not hopeless, even if you’re not where you want to be!
Once we enter the workforce, we start learning through trial by fire if we’re still relatively clueless at that point. Now we are responsible for earning money and paying our expenses. We’re likely motivated by both needs and desires to make ends meet. We start gaining valuable on-the-job skills, and realizing that some of the things we picked up along the way, like social and communication skills, have very real practical value on the job. If we’re willing to continue learning and stay flexible, we can often parlay our gains in experience into better job opportunities or entrepreneurial ventures. If we stop learning or aren’t assertive in looking for expanding opportunities, for whatever reason, then we’re not building the confidence in our ability to earn that would help us to create the important sense of security we’re after.
Another way to build confidence in your ability to support yourself is through life experiences in areas not related to income. Say you encounter a health challenge and are able to make lifestyle and attitude changes to help you in regaining vibrancy as you follow a recommended course of treatment. Rising to the occasion has taught you that you have power within the circumstances that present themselves in your life; you have the ability to roll with the punches and come out better than before, with new knowledge, skills, and belief in yourself. Or say you have a serious issue in a relationship with someone close to you, and you confront it and take action to improve the relationship. While the skills you learned in doing so may not seem immediately relative to your income, you will often gain faith in your ability to handle whatever comes to you in the future. And you may also find that those skills will eventually help you in your moneymaking ventures down the line. Things that you are particularly good at in life have a way of making themselves useful in surprising ways.
The world we live in has changed so much, and so rapidly, that many of us were never formally prepared for the kind of economy in which we now must function. It wasn’t long ago that the norm was for a worker to spend 30 or more years working at the same company and retiring with a financial package designed to keep him going for the rest of his life. Now the norm for a similar worker is to move to a different job, and often workplace, every few years. She is now responsible for her own retirement income. We are at a distinct disadvantage if we’re not good at negotiating and selling ourselves and our talents, or if we’re afraid to try new things and branch out into different kinds of work. Things move quickly in this economy, and sometimes it’s necessary to regroup and take an opportunity that’s being offered even if it’s not what you were looking for. It’s possible to leverage every step you make into more of what you want, but sometimes patience is required.
If you want to feel a sense of security that will free you, here are the items I recommend considering:
- Take stock of your financial skills. Do you know how to budget, balance a checkbook, organize your yearly information to get your taxes filed? If not, spend some time on basic financial literacy. These skills are essential to feeling secure around money.
- Learn about the basics of investing. What are some of the kinds of investments available? It can be very helpful to ask people you know about what investment ideas they’ve come across and chosen to use. Obviously, it’s better to ask people who seem like they’re doing relatively well financially! You may not put this research to use right away, but the more comfortable you become with investing concepts, the more easily you will be able to make good choices when it’s time.
- Regularly take stock of your marketable skills and update your resume. Often we don’t give ourselves credit for the skills we’re constantly learning in the course of life and work.
- Think about skills you have that you might not normally include on a resume, but that help you to remember that you can be flexible, and that you have learned and grown all throughout your life. If you don’t like trying new things, find ways to stretch outside your comfort zone, and make an effort to enjoy the thrill of the novelty.
- Have the courage to examine the beliefs you were taught about money and your ability to have enough. Find a process you can follow to transform any that are clearly not helpful. Often this process yields tremendous gains in your confidence and ability to excel going forward! My favorite way to address this is through Tapping, which can help you to quickly gain clarity and improve your money-related beliefs, but there are many possible paths to the same result. Find one that appeals to you and do this essential work.
I hope this post has given you a few things to think about as you work toward creating a sense of confidence in your financial safety and security. Until next time, I wish you and your family all monetary happiness!