Failing, Fucking Up, and Finding Flow
Rambling about failing. Yellow Brick Road.
Welcome to Yellow Brick Road, an exploration of the guided path!!
“Everything is copy.”
My toxic trait is that this, in the words of the iconic Nora Ephron, is my knee jerk response to fuck ups. But isn’t it true?
I’ve failed miserably at all ice and snow sports, reading classic novels because they’re mostly boring and unapproachable, being an employee to anyone but myself, and dating emotionally available people. And frankly, it’s made me the woman I am today. The only life in which failure is avoidable is one in service of fear.
Failing while making a fucking bowl
In picking up pottery in the last few months, failing has become a regular occurrence. One of the most precarious parts of throwing a mug, cup, or bowl in ceramics is when you’re pulling out the edges. This is the part of the process where you learn to trust your instinct. If you pull too far, your bottom will be too thin and the whole thing will implode at the wheel or in the firing process - either way it’ll end up being a pile of clay which can be repurposed for your next lesson or masterpiece. Metaphor, innit?
The only way to learn how to throw is to fail. Miserably, intentionally fail. The beauty of the failure is that each time you try, you become more confident in where your limits are and more skilled at knowing when you’ve reached the sweet spot. The raw materials needed to build something worth keeping and coveting are still there, waiting to give you infinite chances to show up and learn how to trust yourself.
Failure As A Given
The last thing I said to my mom before hopping on the bus to move to NYC to pursue my career was; “Failure is not an option.” I was so incredibly wrong. Failure was, in fact, my only option. Finding out what I was willing to do to survive when rent was due in 5 days and I had $3 in my bank account was my only option. Looking in the face of old high school friends who expected me to be in law school while I was selling body lotion on Instagram was my only option.
Failure was the only way I would discover that I was more powerful than I’d ever imagined. Failure was the only way I faced every single one of my self-limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviors, and habits which kept me dreaming so small for so long. But mostly, failure has stripped away a lot of the black and white thinking that robbed me of the many life lessons which happen in the grey - all of the exploration, expansion, redefinition, and mastery that goes on between what we define as success and what we define as a royal fuck up.
Failure and success are just two horns on the same bull. The bull is comparison. We often define these terms based on our environments, the opinions and expectations of those we surround ourselves with, where we receive greatest reward, greatest amount of money and the biggest gold stamp of approval from folks we don’t give two shits about. Success can be where, who, what, and how we feel most vindicated in past hurts and inadequacies, proof of our worth, and a big fuck you to anyone who ever doubted what is true. Failure is not meeting these expectations, and hopefully - if you’re listening real good to what’s being communicated by the universe - questioning why the fuck you want to. Failure is an opportunity to redefine success as something that is not dependent on fickle people and their moving goalposts. Because failure relies on perception, we have the power to define it for ourselves.
I define success simply. Success is moving in alignment with my values and principles. I don’t partner with certain brands. I don’t accept money from anywhere. I don’t work with people who don’t see me the way I see me. Success is flow. Failure is humbly returning back to the altar of my values when I’ve strayed, in grace. Regardless of what happens between success and failure, I was brave, I tried, I learned, and I grew.
What Brene Said
“When failure is not an option, we can forget about creativity, learning and innovation.”
There’s so much to be spoken for in such a short sentence, the first of which is the fact that failure is a huge source of teachability. Where there is no failure, there is no chance to learn where you can be a student of life even if you are a master of so much. Aversion to failure is an aversion to the feeling of inadequacy that comes with having to ask for instruction, help, and support which is ultimately an aversion to being vulnerable. Did I just read you for filth in that last sentence? Yeah, me too babe.
Vulnerability - being open to what happens when we are teachable, mutable, available to the whims of creativity and play - is entirely about trusting ourselves to be safe and lovable and important even when we fail. If you define success the way I do - by my principles - then the work is about being brave enough to believe trying is worth the failure. Failing is how we build self-trust. And there are few things more valuable, more foundational to creating, to establishing loving relationships, to living within our truth than the grace of knowing we act in our highest good even if we don’t have control of outcomes.
We will always value the opinions of others. That is the nature of community and being gorgeously social beings. The sting of receiving the “hey I think we should be friends” text after a date, of being passed up for the job or promotion, of thwarted plans and goals will never simply go away. Failure will never stop hurting, and it doesn’t need to because we’re human. But I do think failure can be a hell of a lot less shame-inducing. That’s why redefining failure may be helpful, and what you choose to weigh up in life’s feedback is important.
We do need to know where we are in our journey. We do need to know how our work and life impacts others. We also need to reduce the influence of doing and increase the influence of why we do what we do. Allowing flexibility in how we define failure, how we allow it to impact our self-perception, and what data we choose to focus on when life brings us to our knees, expands our definition of success. It also allows us to find small, unlikely successes in the grey area between roaring achievement and crushing rejection. If you followed your values, charged toward your truth, showed up in vulnerability, and lead by the heart, did you really fail so miserably? I’d say there were a few wins along the way.
Failure in short:
Exists on a spectrum with success and frequently defined by others’ perceptions. Fuck that.
A given. You cannot have courage without knowing failure will come
Best defined by your principles
Can be more valuable when we center the data rather than our shame
Comes with small wins with a little perspective
The enemy of control but control is the enemy of growth
Needed to read this today, thank you!
Needed this as well 💓 thank u