Understanding and Accepting Failure

Give yourself time, you're still healing and processing my psychologist said to me last Monday. After all these years, I still have breakthroughs and learn about my mental health. I realised today that I had spent the past 2 years in a fog of dizziness, Covid, and uncertainty all tinged with hope that things would get better. So my healing was put on pause and now I am able to restart it and once again face my past so that things can get better. I'm focusing on my mental and physical health, I exercise for 30 minutes a day Monday-Friday, I'm eating a high protein diet and I have a goal of completing a 123km hike in October. I'm seeing a physio regularly and have just started twice-weekly small classes so I can strengthen up my loose joints and complete this hike. For once in my life I am taking chances and refusing to play it safe, I'm seeing things differently and changing my perspectives on the world around me. 

For work, we've started a podcast and our most recent episode was on failure, something I know all too well. I have seen myself as a failure and broken for so many years because I haven't met the milestones everyone around me is achieving, but I'm not a failure or broken because I haven't met these milestones. Instead I am creating my own path and realising that while my path hasn't been straightforward it has been beneficial and the right one for me. I took a risk last June by choosing to work for a start-up because I had nothing to lose and it's paying off. I have an amazing job and a boss who is more a mentor/friend than a boss and he wants me to succeed. Yes, there are days when I want nothing more than to hit my head against the keyboard as nothing is making sense and I have writers' block once again but I know I am exactly where I am meant to be. For the first time in a long time I am excited about the future and to see how much I can get pushed because I'm not seeing failure as a bad thing.

I recently watched (more than once might I add!) the film Tick Tick Boom which is about the play-write Jonathan Larson's life. Jonathan spent all his 20s writing a musical only for it to never the light of day because no one would produce it after its showcase. He got told after working on it for so long that while he had talent the musical he had poured his heart and soul into wasn't going to work out. Jonathan kept going and eventually wrote the musical Rent, which received great success. Unfortunately, Jonathan died the night before it made its, off-Broadway debut and he never saw its success. The whole movie theme is about failure and what happens when success feels so close but so far away. Sometimes we won't see that success but we still need to keep going because failure is a part of life and we can't keep playing it safe. Jonathan kept going even when others and even himself doubted his ability and he created a musical that changed the landscape of what a musical could and should be but he never would've succeeded had he not failed and learned from his failures. 

We shouldn't be scared about failure and just because we fail doesn't make us failures it makes us human. For so long I have been afraid of showing the mental scars I have due to failing which contributed to my low self-confidence issues. I am done hiding my failures and the scars they have left because we should fail often and use that failure as momentum to go further. I'm still learning to appreciate failure but now when I look in the mirror I don't see my failures instead I see someone who is incredibly resilient and has overcome so much with the help of my failures.