35. Re-Framing Growth and Your Relationship to Failure

In this episode we talk about the role that failure plays in personal growth and success. 

We'll also talk about re-framing our journeys in a way that helps us move forward with the ability to navigate obstacles and failures.

0:00
0:36 Why we fear/avoid failure...
1:29 Academic "failing" and life
2:39 Failing is part of the journey
3:18 Low/No Obstacles
3:45 Obstacles & failure with hard things
4:33 Climbing Everest
5:31 Failure/Obstacles are a feature
6:31 Making the journey less scary
6:40 Fear of the upward climb
6:55 #1 Fear of being "above" others
7:20 #2 Failure is dangerous
7:54 Forward vs. upward
9:37 Life as a forward journey
9:43 Not a climb
10:10 Crash and burn
10:37 Navigation, re-routing, re-evaluating
11:05 No more leveling up
11:30 "Going on a Bear Hunt"
11:54 Navigate the obstacles
12:35 Thank you!

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:23

Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of Whatever with Heather. Today we're going to talk about failure, and we're going to talk about failure in the context of how we frame our journey through life. The people who make it through life and set goals and achieve them or continuously move forward in life, the people that are willing to take risks and try new things and grow and become and step into new versions of themselves these people know that failure is part of the journey. First, let's talk about failure. Most of us have a fear of failure, which is totally understandable, because we were taught in school that passing is good and failing is bad. From the age of five, we were literally graded and told whether we passed, in other words, whether we were good at what we were trying to do, or whether we failed, in other words, if we were bad at what we were trying to do. Passing and failing have been framed for us from a young age, and failing is bad. We were taught that and we internalized that that failing must be avoided at all costs, and so we have applied this academic definition of failing to every part of our lives. We want to quote unquote pass or succeed at everything without ever failing because in school it was possible to pass everything without ever failing right. Some people could just pass their classes and never experience an actual failing of a class. And so we think that in our lives we should be able to recreate that this pass, fail experience of life in which we are always passing, always succeeding and never failing. And so anytime the possibility of failing comes up, that we could try something and not succeed, we either avoid the thing or we try the thing, and when we fail we really beat ourselves up. When we're not instantly successful or when we struggle, we think something is wrong with us. Because in school we were taught that failing meant something was wrong, something was not right, you were not doing something well, and Because in school we were taught that failing meant something was wrong, something was not right, you were not doing something well. And so in life we think the same thing that failing needs to be avoided and if we are failing or not succeeding or struggling, that something must be wrong with us. But the fact is that failing is part of the journey. But the fact is that failing is part of the journey, the things you do and become and try and achieve and shift into and grow into in life include failure or struggle or obstacles. This is true for your children as well, that failing and obstacles and struggles are part of their journey. We'll talk about that in another episode. Today we're focused on you and your journey. But failure is part of the path. Struggle, conflict, obstacles are all part of walking a path, walking your path.

Speaker 0: 3:39

Because here's the thing, the things in life that there's not really an obstacle for or a chance of failing or any sort of struggle are not things that make you proud. Like it's highly unlikely that you brush your teeth every night and go to bed just super proud that you brushed your teeth every night. Maybe you're proud of that and you should be, but it's a low risk, low obstacle thing that you just do, you just get it done. But when it comes to growing and a stronger mindset and a stronger body and a stronger connection to source or the divine, stronger relationships, a stronger sense of self, all of these things are a little more complicated and they come with a little more maneuvering and figuring it out and obstacles and not succeeding and failing and hitting brick walls. These journeys are a little more complicated, a little more complex than brushing your teeth, and that's what makes it worth it. It is easy. It is simple to brush your teeth. It is not necessarily easy or simple to grow or change or try new things or establish new habits.

Speaker 0: 4:51

We experience resistance in the things that yield a bigger reward. Let's think about Mount Everest for a second. You may think of somebody who wants to climb Mount Everest and be like I could never do that. I wouldn't want to do that. But the reason we're so impressed by these people that choose to climb hard mountains, whether it's Everest or even smaller mountains, is because of the obstacle, the challenges, the risk of failure that comes with it that they are willing to face to reach a goal. If climbing Everest were easy, it would not be something we admire or look at in awe. It is the struggle and the obstacle and the risk of failure that makes us look at people that climb Everest or climb other mountains and say, wow, I can't believe they did that. The things that make us proud are things that there are obstacles and resistance and even failures that may occur, and then we still push forward anyway. Those are the things that make us proud, and so the risk of failure or obstacles is a feature of walking a path that lights you up, and it's not a bug. It's not something we need to avoid and be scared of.

Speaker 0: 6:04

If you let your fear of failure stop you from trying something new, then you will not grow or expand from the place you currently sit. Comfort is easy. Good things, including growth, inherently include the risk of failure and obstacles. In other words, you might not be perfect, you might look stupid, you might be judged by other people. You might be rejected by other people. You might make a mistake. You might be judged by other people. You might be rejected by other people. You might make a mistake. You might set a goal and mess it up. You might make a choice and then realize it was not the right choice. Your growth requires you to be okay with all of that and know that that is part of the path, and those things may show up or they may not show up on your path, but that is part of the path. That is part of growing and becoming and stepping into somewhere new. But one way to make our journey less scary is if we view our journey as forwards instead of upwards.

Speaker 0: 7:02

Some of what stops us from growing and becoming the next version of ourselves, stepping into the next version of who we are, is this fear of the upward climb, and what I mean by this is two parts. The first thing is that we can sometimes be concerned that if we grow and we're climbing upward, that other people may look at us and think that we think we are better or above them because we have climbed higher than them. That is one of the problems in looking at growth as an upward climb, like climbing up a ladder. The other thing is that if we are climbing upward, then failure becomes more dangerous the higher we climb. And so, as we're climbing upward, the higher we climb, the more we grow, the scarier failing or messing up becomes, because failure equals falling from the ladder, equals death or major injury, and that is something we truly fear. We do not want to equate failing on the path to death to falling from what we have grown into. So let's talk about these two things.

Speaker 0: 8:19

We reframe how we view growth and change and realize that growth and change isn't vertical. We can move beyond our current state without placing ourselves above other people or thinking we're better than other people. Moving beyond a current state is forward movement, not upward movement, and so, as we're walking our path, stepping into the next version of ourselves or the person we want to become. We view this journey as forward movement rather than upward movement. We move beyond where we're currently at and we're just moving forward. This does not place us above other people. This just places us on a different part of the path, or maybe even a different path completely, and one path is not better than another. We're all unique people and we probably all should be on our own paths, so it's really hard to compare who's in front or behind someone else when you're all on your own path.

Speaker 0: 9:19

If you move to a place where you don't do or think or believe or act as XYZ anymore, then you haven't necessarily leveled up. You've leveled or moved forward. As we grow, we actually become less concerned with the hierarchy of life, in other words, what is better, what makes me higher than others and we're more concerned with the forward movement, growth, expansion of life, softening, or am I stuck in a rigid existence in which I am trying to climb upward? Viewing life as forward movement, along whatever path we choose, allows us to view growth as less of a climb and more of a journey with obstacles to navigate. By moving forward instead of upward, we can become less concerned with failure. And here is why, with forward movement, there is no crash and burn, just obstacles you navigate, course corrections you make and wide open spaces of bliss and flow that arrive. The crash and burn happens when we believe that life is a climb, so we view our striving and growth as upward and our failing as downward. We climb and we fall, and in a vertical climb, failure equals death and a lot of us avoid failure and growth because we view life this way.

Speaker 0: 10:54

Failure comes with really high stakes. When you are viewing life as an upward climb, viewing life as a forward journey, is where the magic is. Instead of failure being a crash and burn, life or death situation, failure on the path, the journey forward is sideways movement, rerouting movement, changing direction movement. Failure is part of the growth. Failure is part of the journey. Failure is not death on the journey, it's just part of the path you are walking. It's part of the journey.

Speaker 0: 11:27

So instead of viewing life as leveling up and getting higher and moving above other people and therefore failure becomes scarier and scarier the higher we climb we instead view life as forward movement and then, on the path, we aren't shocked when there's obstacles or risks or even failure. Those are just things to navigate, to move around, to move through Just now, in this moment. This makes me think of the song going on a bear hunt and you come to a river and you're like can't go over it, can't go under it, got to swim through it. And then you just swim, swim, swim. Then you're going on a bear hunt and then you're going on a bear hunt and you come to a field and you can't really go over it and you can't go under it. You've got to go through it and you walk through the grass. On this bear hunt, life is about the obstacles we face and how we navigate them, how we maneuver through them, how we even move through the times that are easy and have flow.

Speaker 0: 12:26

If your fear of failure is keeping you stuck, rewind back and see where you learned about failure and what failure means about you, and begin to reframe failure as just part of the path, as not a pass fail grade in school. And if you are scared of growth or fear growth because of what those around you will think, reframe your growth as forward movement, just walking the path. It doesn't place you above other people, it just places you in your own journey. I hope this has served you today. Thank you for being here for another episode and I will see y'all next week and chat with you next week. Bye.