A failure can crop up at any stage of a process. In long processes like life, failures are inevitable. A setback of losing something or someone, failing to protect someone, or keeping a promise, realizing that you are not going to make it for a specific task. In all such events, we often tend to overthink, let the twisted spiral of complex emotions like shame and guilt take over while our logic takes a back seat, and, thus, get a taste of failure.
In any case of failure, there follows a whirlwind of emotions. Emotions make us react – take unnecessary decisions and end up making more mistakes. A series of failures often paves the path to a detrimental – negative state of mind. Usually, no good outcomes arise from such a negative state of being. Soon later, we get to see social seclusion, blame games, and addictions. That is a damage – Damage to the mind, body, and the people, you are connect to. No one loves damage. However, it is the human mind that tries to keep us safe in a situation where the potential outcome is negative. Moreover, to keep us safe and moving, at times, our safety loving mind does things that are not even required. A scared mind is always seeking for safety and is always in search of the shortcut route to haven.
There are several routes to reach a haven. However, in shortcuts, there often dwell regrets. In such times there is an opportunity to let logic work and set yourself into a positive frame of mind. All we need to do is step back and analyze the failure. Allow ourselves to take time, and then our mind offers us a glimpse of all the unreasonable decisions we took and where we further catapulted ourselves into a negative state of mind. Knowing the things that you ‘had no control over’ and acknowledging that things were not in your control is essential. However, do not investigate them as and when you find them.
Heard of the quote- ‘if you want to know the city, walk it’? Likewise, if you want to know where you went wrong, you need to walk the path, know the things at fault, acknowledge, and work on them. These are building blocks where you learn about yourself, where you start your walk towards a positive state of being and then comes the plinth from where you move. I do not want to say move on. I mean to say MOVE FORWARD. And remember, no one is stopping you from making a list.
This blogpost is about failures and moving forward with it. Through three microblogs below, I wish to share a few aspects, some realizations that came overtime and learnings I got having the difficult conversations with my guides, friends, and family.
From hindrance in moving forward to becoming the Samurai of your right IN Failure
Let us talk about hindrances. Our preconceived restrictions are often the mammoth hindrances in moving forward. These start with a simple ‘what if?’ in mind and grow on to become all the ‘I just can’t.’ Here, let us go back a little. In most situations of failures, the most common feelings are disappointment and embarrassment. However, we often tend to produce more than one emotion, such as the feeling of being a victim of circumstances, guilt, anger, and self-doubt.
There was an instance when I came across all of this at once. Once on a summer afternoon, I was driving home from another city in India. About 150 km away from my destination, a couple on a bike overtook me from the wrong side and went ahead. I could see the lady on the pillion seat with a bag on her shoulder. She held her husband, who was driving the bike at the same time she was also holding a baby on the other hand. All this while sitting sideways, as was wearing a traditional Indian saree, and the baby was partly resting on her lap. For a long stretch, there were no oncoming vehicles.
Soon as there were oncoming vehicles. The biker started doing stunts raising his hands, relieving the handlebars, gesticulated unpleasant gestures at the oncoming cars, and worst, driving on the wrong side of the road. The scene worried my family and me. We prayed for their safety, watching him playing crash dodge with oncoming traffic while riding along with family. Soon later, he went off-road, lost control, and all family and their belongings were scattered on the road a few yards away from our car. We stopped the car, grabbed the first aid kit, got off to help them, and a few others from both sides of the traffic joined to take care of the family. Luckily, no one got hurt.
Shocked by the sudden accident, the lady was dumbstruck, worried she held her baby close to her, while her husband dusted himself up and started blaming her for spoiling his amazing life where he used to be a rider. He kept yelling at his wife while all the onlookers tried to make him understand his irresponsible act and calm him down. The whole place was about to become a spot of road rage as frustrated onlookers were waiting for someone to land the first blow on him. All this while the man kept yelling suddenly, he received a flying shoe. We looked back to see where it came from, and to our surprise, it was his wife, who hurled it. There was pin-drop silence. With just one shoe on, she limped to her husband and asked him to start the bike and take them home.
When I thought about it later, the whole scene was a classic place to observe how emotions flow in different individuals as we notice the one same failure. Here, the accident was a failure, something that was not supposed to happen. Failure of not being able to take care of a baby and family. Failure of not being able to drive responsibly and failure to provide safety. The frustrated onlookers were waiting for the first blow to land, noticing the disappointment, all were angry.
My family was anxious about the safety and wellbeing of the couple and the baby. The husband appeared disappointed, blamed his wife for the accident, and went on playing a victim card. However, his wife demonstrated the broadest range of emotional expression I had seen until my age then. From being shocked to feeling embarrassed about the whole situation, she started apologizing for the husband’s mistake while crying, to hurling a shoe at her husband in anger. It was complicated. Whenever I remember this incident, I really wonder what the baby was thinking.
After a few readings and several years, what I realized is that the lady must have realized that she had no control over the bike and still was receiving all the blame for a near-death experience. Perhaps, she also recalled past events where her husband did blame her for his mistakes. The concerns of the onlookers as they yelled at the husband must have resonated with her. Assimilating the echoes of the crowd, she decided to hurl a shoe of discontent at him. What had happened was, SHE GOT CLOSURE.
Living with self-doubt is exhausting. Questioning yourself about the things you do not have any experience or knowledge about is an endless non-fulfilling exercise. The prolonged practice of exercises often results in confusion and loss of faith in oneself. Become one with yourself is a result of when the mourning of an unpleasant event ends; this is what is known as closure.
The Cambridge dictionary describes closure as the feeling or act of bringing an unpleasant situation, time, or experience to an end so that you can start new activities. Closure and the time it takes to be yourself again varies for each one of us. Thus, this variation in achieving closure is one of the factors why a few people die soon after their partner or best friend dies, and a few others get back to routine life in a few days. What differs in both is not only the capacity to bear the pain but the ability to end the suffering from the unpleasant experience and reach closure.
The path to success starts with a semi-ideal mental match.
Whenever we are attracted to someone or feel that a particular person will help us solve the burning problems in life, we often end up doing either of the two things. 1. Talk more to them to get to know them. 2. Chicken the hell out into a cave full of shyness and embarrassment. With the first one, you get an opportunity to know the person you are trying to know about. With the second, you just get to enjoy your cave, called yourself clumsy, and self-loathe in the process.
Questions are a friendly conversation starter. Start with a question, and if you talk more, you overcome the overwhelming feeling of running into your safe cave of shyness. However, in a conversation between two people, there are four individuals involved, you, and your mind & they, and their mind. These individual minds are what Seth Godin calls the ‘Lizard brain’ – the part of the brain which makes you wonder and initiates the thought process of ‘whether your questions are good or bad?’, ‘does he/she likes my questions?’ and all possible murphy’s law illustrations.
Please allow me to tell you- good and bad can be easily perceived as two sides of the same coin, and the coin is whatever ‘question’ you have. Never label a question as a good question or bad. What makes us think that ‘my question’ will be perceived as good or bad is the frequency of the person to whom you ask the question. Also, the question usually gets labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’ only once you ask it to a person, a forum, or a system.
Now comes the exciting part; the person who DOES NOT wish to help you with your challenges is something that you have no control over. These are not bad people. Let us assume they are unaware of the global need for ‘giving things away’ to make informed future generations. In other instances, if the person you expect your answers from often tends to discard your questions, moreover makes make you feel like ‘you asked a bad question’ or plain and simple, make you feel stupid. Let me assure you, the question was never bad, neither you are stupid. Your questions were just not addressed to a suitable person.
Yes, it is that simple.
In most cases, the person you chose to answer your questions may not have an appropriate answer. However, this allows you to find a more suitable person next time what I prefer to call as a semi-ideal mental match (SIMM). These are the people who have walked the path you want to walk. They have lived or are living the life you aspire for yourself. If you have seen the movie Whiplash, you know what I am talking about. Your semi-ideal mental match will help you clear the clouds of doubt and nudge you to your success in the future.
Failures Are inevitable. so fail forward and take charge of yourself.
In the book Failing Forward, John C. Maxwell tries to help its readers on how to confidently look at the prospect of failure in the eye and move forward. I feel as a leadership coach and New York Times bestseller author Maxwell tried bringing together the following recipe for failing forward: Failure is inevitable, so embrace it; Failures lead to success; Learn from your failures, and; Set goals that will encourage you to take action, in this process, fail more and proceed again.
Let me try and put this in a different form. The process Maxwell has put together, if nothing, is a secret sauce of making a resilient individual. Casually, we often call these people’ strong women’ and ‘strong men’. These are the individuals that have accepted failure a part of the process, may it be learning, earning, or giving. Resilient individuals are easily the most inspiring individuals in the room. These are individuals that have the command to remain calm and steady in the face of tremendous losses. So how do they do it?
Resilient individuals take control of their situation. In the wake of a failure, firstly, they take control of their physical state. Meaning? They have mastered what their responses and reflexes are and have control over them. Secondly, they know and understand their psychological state. They rarely snap at people and seldom blame anyone for their loss. Even if they do, that immediately becomes something to be noted and rectified as a behavior. Thirdly, they manage their network well. Most importantly, they know where to invest their emotions, time, and effort.
The process of becoming a resilient individual is serendipitous. If you seek something of significant meaning to you, it will happen to you too. If you are chasing a goal, the process comes to you in time. However, you will need to embrace failure, repeatedly till you get used to it. As Maxwell puts it, ‘Because in life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how are you going to deal with them? Stop failing backward and start failing forward!’
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