“Every artist was first an amateur.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
What comes to mind when you hear this quote? What constitutes a failure to you?
When I think of failure, I don’t think of how unfortunate and frustrating it is, but rather how helpful it can be.
Failure is defined as the condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends or the condition or fact of being insufficient or falling short.
Failure is a choice that is reinforced as unacceptable by a high-achieving society.
But failure is a beautifully ironic thing. Without it, we would have no success, and yet it’s the last thing we want when pursuing success.
We must accept that we suck at something to ever not suck at something.
And even when we get as far as mastering something, we must be humble enough to act as if we’re still an amateur.
Children are a great example of this. They are amateurs at everything they try. They have seemingly unaffected beginner’s luck. A fresh, new, untainted, unafraid approach that is so beautiful to watch.
They may fail, cry, stamper, and pout, but at least they tried, without much hesitation, and eventually get up, dust themselves off, and try again.
We call it luck when they finally get it right, but it’s not luck, it’s a failure.
It’s like poker. Some play it for the first time and win hand after hand after hand, and the whole table chalks it up to beginner’s luck, but that’s no luck at all.
That’s both having no idea that their cards are the best at the table and playing without much care as to their card’s odds of winning the hand because they didn’t know that those cards made a good hand in the first place.
It’s a childlike carelessness.
Furthermore, never trying things that frighten us is one unhealthy habit to develop.
The fear of failure (or Atychiphobia) is a universal feeling, one that every single person on Earth has and will experience multiple times in their life.
Reflection
“There’s no way I can do that!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t want to!”
“I’ll never be that good!”
“What’s the use?”
I hear these phrases far too much, people giving up before the fight even begins.
We are selling ourselves short every single time we mutter those words, both inside and outside our heads.
We are selling ourselves short every time we refuse to try something new or retry something old and forgotten.
Forget what you cannot do and there is so much left over that you can.
Over time, that fear of failure will dwindle to but a speck in the mind, and eventually we will come to even seek out failure.
Failure is also different than letting go.
Failure implies that we are unsuccessful at accomplishing something less important to us.
Letting go implies that we are opening space for something more important to us.
It’s a matter of importance.
When something is important enough to you, nine times out of ten you will try over and over and over again to learn it with accuracy.
Encouragement
I encourage you (as I encourage myself each day) to try something new with the expectation that you will fail and to know that failure itself is an essential part of the learning process.
Then, I encourage us to keep that vision we try, over and over and over again.
It can be something as minuscule as a drawing, writing a poem, or cooking a new dish. Or it can be something massive like a trip outside the country, learning a new language, or getting a pilot’s license.
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