“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley
I don’t know where I picked it up from, but for the longest time I believed it was fatal to fail. Whether the fear was for real physical death, or death of my reputation, I believed that failing at something meant I would be harmed in some way. If failure is not an option, that meant that I was required to be perfect at everything I cared about or was required of me. Perfection is impossible for us as humans. There’s no such thing as a human being that executes and processes everything they approach perfectly. That means for the longest time, I believed I had to be perfect.
Didn’t I know that perfection was impossible? In an intellectual way, sure. In my heart, I didn’t connect the dots. Since I couldn’t actually be perfect, that meant I had to fake it. Looking back, I really don’t think I fooled anyone but myself.
I did accomplish great things, but the problem with being fake, especially with myself, means the accomplishments hold less meaning. Or worse, sometimes no meaning. When I achieved a goal, I didn’t feel I’d really accomplished it, or deserved it. That came about for many reasons, but also in part because I wasn’t authentic. If people really knew who I was, this monster I felt like I was deep down inside, then they wouldn’t really honor me or congratulate me on this, or any previous accomplishment.
Let me tell you, faking perfection, even to just myself, is a really stressful way to live. It’s really really stressful. If you live that way, I really want you to hear me when I say, it’s not worth it friend. It’s so not worth it.
When I came across the phrase “Progress, not perfection.” I was a little confused and a lot hopeful. Would I achieve as much if I let go of my drive to be perfect? The argument that I was trying to attain the impossible to no end, was intriguing. However, wasn’t the drive more important as it resulted in achievement?
Was it? Did the belief that my drive for perfection was what resulted in achievement, true?
Well, I had experimented with critical versus supportive self talk and had been surprised by the results. I could apply a similar experiment here. If I allowed myself to focus on progress, as opposed to results, would it result in less achievement? I ran the experiment, though in a much less formal way, and found that my achievement level did not diminish. My stress level did diminish. My self-acceptance and feeling of ease in my life increased. Imagine that, trying to be perfect and trying to fight off the shame of constantly failing used up a lot of my bandwidth. Without that constant pattern operating, I was freed up to learn and even do more in my life. I was freed up to grow more and faster.
Eventually, operating from a place of celebrating my progress, rather than my achievements, also allowed me to change my relationship with failure. Instead of seeing failure as something bad, I could see failure for what it really is, an opportunity to learn important information. Failure is simply data. If I failed to achieve some goal, the question isn’t about my capability or worth, but rather about what information or skillset am I missing? What did I not account for? Failure is just information to get me closer to success. It's not something that indicates my lack or my inadequacy. It’s a gold mine of information that is there to help orient me in a better direction in order to achieve what I’m aiming for.
Failure is not a reflection on me, either as a professional or as a human being. It’s simply information I need to move me closer to success. It’s a normal part of the process!
My favorite analogy is this. When a young child is first starting to learn to walk, their brain needs a ton of data to learn how to successfully balance and move forward on two legs. Once they’re strong enough to keep their torso straight enough and stay standing, they take their first steps and fall. They get back up and take a step and fall. If you watch a kid learning to walk, you’ll see they lean too far to one side, and then fall. They lean too far to another, and fall. At no point does the kid feel shame at falling, nor should they. Each time they fall, their brain gets data about how far beyond their center of balance they can go before gravity over powers them. When you slow down the process and consider what the brain has to learn for a child to successfully walk a bunch of steps forward, it’s an incredible amount of information. The falling, or the “failure” is as valuable, necessary and important as the successful steps forward. Everything is valuable information.
It was incredible to see how failure was as valuable as success. There was no longer any good or bad associated with failure, or even success. Talk about new levels of freedom. Realizing that was really freeing. It freed me to stop judging myself with those standards. It freed me to also grow and accept that making mistakes, which I viewed as failures, was a crucial part of my growth and development. I mine my mistakes for information, even now. Especially now. I don’t love them, but I don’t dread them like I once did. And with tawba (repentence) I don’t fear them or the regret that can follow them when they’re particularly difficult mistakes, like hurting someone’s feelings unintentionally by expressing something imperfectly.
May we each learn and grow our ability to give ourselves mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and grow in our trust that we can always overcome any mistake no matter how bad. May we each experience the freedom that comes with accepting and valuing our mistakes and failures as we value our successes. Amin.
Peace and Love,
Mariam-Saba