The Curious Case of Failure

“I am trying to decide if I need to start looking for a job, apply for higher education, or continue my work with the social enterprise I am working in – which I love, and am very passionate about, but doesn’t pay me enough”. In her early twenties, Priyanka* is a successful social entrepreneur, and yet is riddled with anxiety about what her next step in life should be. With well meaning family and friends giving her advice at every turn, she was confused and could not bring herself to make a final decision.

We have all been Priyanka at some point in our lives, struggling to understand what we want out of life, let alone what our next step should be. Having had dozens of conversations with women at various stages of life, I have understood that this anxiety is common, and prevalent at all ages and phases of life – and when we delve deeper, what emerges as the cause for this anxiety is fear – more often than not, the fear of being judged as a failure by others around them.

All of us are conditioned to not fail. From the time we go to school, we are constantly evaluated on how high our grades are, how well we do in extra curricular activities and which college or university we get accepted into. All of us are expected to be in the top 5 percentile of class rankings. Those who do not meet these expectations are written off or labeled. And this conditioning continues long into our thirties and forties (and more), where we are constantly evaluating ourselves against our team members or others at our level. This judgment that we pass on others and ourselves brings about its own form of impact on us – mentally, physically and emotionally, and it takes continuous and conscious effort to pull ourselves out of this self-sabotaging cycle.

What can help us come out of this cycle? Here are a few things that can help – this list is not exhaustive, but are those which I believe are fundamental to embracing a life that is not focused on the fear of failure.

Building up Self-Compassion

This is harder to do than we think, especially when we have spent most of our young adult and adult lives berating ourselves for the mistakes we make. Being gentle with oneself is the first step towards accepting that you are human – an evolving being, learning something new every day. You do not have all the answers, and you never will – but you will know more today than you did yesterday.

Knowing you have a Choice

Want to lose 10kgs? You have the choice of eating that piece of chocolate, or not. Want to make more money? The choice is yours to decide whether you need to hustle harder, move to a better paying job, or simply stop doing some things so that you can focus on others that can be more profitable. Understand that every action you take is a choice, and a step you are taking towards the future version of yourself – you have the power to steer yourself towards greatness.

Redefining Failure

Something that has worked immensely for me is to completely remove the word ‘failure’ from my vocabulary. For me something either works out, or I’ve been lucky enough to find ways in which it cannot work out – and so make more informed decisions about my next steps. This attitude applies towards everything I do in life, personally and professionally. It has helped me save time and energy I would have otherwise spent either kicking myself or ruminating about the mistakes I had made.

As Angela Lee Duckworth points out in her TED talk, grit (the ability to work hard at making sure you achieve your goals, no matter how challenging the road becomes) is a brilliant indicator of success. In other words, those who are gritty relate to what is normally considered to be a failure in very different ways.

What can help one build this alternative mindset to failure? One of the most impactful methods I have seen used (and experienced first-hand) is to have someone on the journey with you – someone who can help you look at a situation or incident with an objective point of view, and with your growth in mind. Someone who can help you reframe a situation and break it down so that you are able to focus on what you have learnt, and what your next steps should be. For some, this might mean a friend or a loved one or even a mentor – but for many of us, this is a coach. While those in our close circle can be helpful, many a time it is hard for them to be objective about what you have been through – on the other hand, a coach is in a unique position to not only be able to provide you with the emotional/mental support, but also help you create a space of self-reflection that is focused on moving forward towards your goals.

As a kid, I heard a story of how Thomas Edison failed at inventing the light-bulb more than 900 times, before finally inventing the precursor to all light bulbs used today. I don’t know how historically accurate that number might be, but I believe we are all like Edison, except that the thing we are trying to invent is the best life for ourselves.

*Name is changed to protect privacy.