It is not the actual failure that bothers us so much but the stories we tell ourselves for why we failed.
The thing about how we often interpret other people’s failure versus our own is in the stories we tell ourselves on what it means. We interpret other people’s failures (especially people who have already become successful) as part of the journey. We see their journey from the point of view of their success, we leads us to assign to these people more insight and understanding than they actually had at the time. Because we KNOW they end up successful, we see their failures from the point of view of ‘they knew what they were doing and they knew they would succeed and these failures were just part of their journey to inevitable success’.
But Steve Jobs once said you can’t connect the dots looking forward. Its easy to see someone's journey, failures and all as a well-planned strategy in hindsight.
But you know a secret?
They had no idea what they were doing. They were winging it just as much as you are now. Their success was in no way ‘inevitable’. There was no difference in their failures versus yours.
We believe that their failures are somewhat different. That the thought didn’t pop up in their heads that they should give up. That they knew they would succeed. Whereas for us, because the thought comes ‘this means I am a failure’, it must be true.
The problem is that people have this egocentric belief that their thoughts are always true, that they can predict the future, that they mean something. Sorry buddy but just because you think something doesn’t make it true. You’re not that special. Your thoughts tell you about the future as much as the thought ‘I am a yellow lemon’ tells you about your future (unless you are a yellow lemon in which case I stand corrected).
And because we believe our thoughts we fear our thoughts. We want to avoid failure because if your thought process when you fail is ‘my failure SAYS something about me, MEANS I will never succeed, SHOWS ME what type of person I am’ of course you’ll avoid failure! Who wants to feel like they are pathetic, destined for nothing, means they’ll always be the same regardless of how hard they try?
And if you fear the thoughts that come with failing (the thoughts that somehow magically tell you the truth) you will avoid opportunities to fail and so limit your world even more.
So what stories can we tell ourselves to make failure less scary and intimidating? Stay tuned for next week’s post!
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