Thoughts on Failure

To further drive the point of this post home, I spent an hour (with many interruptions) writing these thoughts on failure, only to have something fail and lose the entire thing. The irony is not lost on me as I sit here writing this post a second time!

Do you ever catch yourself thinking “I’m such a failure” or “I never finish anything I start” or “I haven’t done anything I’m proud of doing”? And then you proceed to give yourself a list of reasons why the above is true? Because you’re not where you want to be in your career, or you wake up unhappy in the morning, or your life just doesn’t look like you want to look? 

What if…you flipped that and instead gave your brain evidence of the opposite? What could you accomplish in your life with just the belief that you are a success? That you are the person who finishes what you start and you are proud of the things you do? What could happen if you believed that to be true?

So let’s look for some evidence that these things are true.

You are a success. Did you make a perfect cup of coffee today? Did you do the laundry? Did you get out of bed when it was really hard? 

There are things you have success in doing.

You finish what you start. Did you finish getting dressed today, or did you stop after your pants were on? Did you drive the whole way to work or did you stop halfway? 

You do finish things you start,

You do things you are proud of doing. Do you make the most awesome (fill in the blank) out of anyone you know? What’s your hidden talent?

You are proud of things you do.

Journaling prompt: Make a list every single day of 5 things that are evidence of success for you. Watch what it does to your perception of yourself. And then take the energy of the possibility of it being true and apply that feeling, that growing belief in what you are wholly capable of doing, and apply it to the bigger things in your life that you want to create for yourself. 

Mantra prompt: I decide how I define success.