The Gift of Failure
Why falling down from time to time is a good thing
By Spider Graham
As we tumble into a new year, I’m reminded of the rituals of new year's past and how the idea of a new start often descends into a sense of shame for not achieving what I set out to achieve. For example, in the past, January meant having sore muscles for the first few weeks of the month and possibly being constantly hangry as my new year's resolution to get fit slowly (quickly?) went off the rails (I blame you Girl Scout cookies!) before we had even cracked February. Likewise, my self-agreement to go for more walks more often was generally met with ‘What? It’s cold outside during winter in the Northeastern US? Who knew?’, moments before closing my door to go back to the relative comfort of my office where I would participate in the sitting olympics for the rest of the year.
This year I’ve decided that self-flagellation isn’t working for me and instead I wanted to think more about the beauty of a new start as a way to keep myself aimed at those things most important to me.
As I shared in a recent post (The Audacity of a New Start) the beauty of a blank canvas is that you can paint anything you want on it. The simple reality is that sometimes what you paint will be meaningful and sometimes it won’t be. But every shortcoming or even failure becomes a gift if you choose to accept it as one.
Let me explain.
In my life and career, I’ve gotten really good at a lot of things. On the other hand, most of the things I’ve ever attempted were pretty craptastic the first time. But instead of feeling shame for my failures, I’ve learned to look at every failure and determine what lessons were learned and how I can use those lessons to do a better job next time. I’ve also learned to forgive myself for not being perfect all the time. It turns out, I’m not an amazing screw-up, just a human being figuring things out along the way.
I’ve learned to approach learning and doing new things like learning to ride a bicycle. My own bicycle riding story included a few significant wipeouts that scored scraped knees and elbows. Fortunately, at the time, I was so focused on the desire to learn to ride a two-wheeler that I was absolutely not willing to give up my pursuit simply because I had blood running down my leg. Instead, I used the pain, or the desire to have less of it in the future, to modify my bike riding approach, learn to balance better and pretty much rode off into the sunset as a proficient bicycle rider.
In fact, every failure in my life (and I’ve survived them all so far) has been a learning moment for me. While I don’t love failing and making mistakes, I chalk it up to being human and alive. I’m going to mess things up from time to time so I might as well accept it and find out how to use it to make things better.
In this way, when things don’t go the way I want them to, I can avoid the utter disbelief that I somehow didn’t hit the center of the bullseye with something I was trying for the first time and instead pick myself up yet again to figure out how I can apply the hard lesson just learned so I don’t need to make it again.
In this way, I am constantly giving myself permission for a mulligan or do over. Instead of creating a ginormous canvas for myself, like dedicating a full year to transfer my dad-bod into something with an 8 pack and 3% body fat, instead I’ve learned to look at each day as a new canvas of its own. The mistakes of yesterday are past. The rule is that shame and guilt can’t move to the next day. Only the lessons learned are allowed over the transom.
Not only that, each day can be made up of even smaller canvases which represent an hour or 3 hours or even 15 minutes. With each new canvas we are free to start over again and let the past stay in the past. Only our potential and the lessons of the past move forward with us. We can also scrap what we’re working on any time to create a new canvas if we need one.
The new start is a gift that we can keep giving to ourselves over and over again. What we do with it is meaningful but not definitive. If the diet had a bad day, grab a new canvas the next day and start over. If the weather is too cold for a long walk, find an alternative that makes you happy with the effort. The bottom line is that guilt, shame and recriminations have no reason to exist beyond any single moment. You will make mistakes and you will learn lessons and you will continue to move forward.
Although those damn Girl Scout cookies will always find you.
About Spider Graham
Spider Graham is the Founder and CEO of Gravity Clamp and has been a fixture in digital content marketing for nearly 30 years. As a technology writer and strategies trainer, Spider spends a lot of time thinking about ways to make content marketing even more powerful and offers AI Marketing focused training and consulting services. Check out Gravity Clamp’s free course on AI Marketing Fundamentals while it's still available to learn more.