How Do You Handle Failure?

There you are, rocked into pain by the smash of failure. You’re a wreck. You know that metaphor? By whatever circumstances, you have careened off track and your fender is bent around an obstacle you knew you somehow could’ve avoided if only you’d… been paying attention, seen it coming, were a better [whatever], had a better resources, weren’t distracted, fill in the blank.

Blame is the face of the frowning internal priest, the robed boss of your conscience who recounts all the ways you have sinned. Sin really means to miss the mark. Or in the case of our car-crash metaphor, you hit a mark you shouldn’t have.

Blame all you want. It won’t fix the dents in your ego — it’ll make them worse.

Turn away from the frowning inner priest toward the peaceful inner guru who smiles at you benignly, offering no quick fixes out of your mess, but — blessedly — no reproach either. This guru is the breath of ease around failure. She’s the one who says, “Failure is feedback.”

This inner guru knows that failure itself is neutral. It is a word that signifies not achieving what you set out to achieve. Any additional attachment to the word is something to work out in your healing spaces.

With kindness, recollect the steps that brought you to this state. See if you can locate the mis-step. Correct it if you can. If you can’t, forgive yourself, learn from the mistake, and move on.