If I try to speak, I will lose my thought. If I put myself out there, I will be rejected/judged/misconceived. If I stumble, I cannot regain control. If I look, all will be lost. Etc. So, failure is a possibility. This is true. But it is that, only a possibility. This means its opposite is also true. Success, if I want it I must try for it. This means I cannot seek to eliminate failure, but that I should change the way I react to it. Failure, it's a difficult thing to own. Very difficult. But you must own it. Do no retreat. Instead, learn from that pain, use it to keep you moving forward. There is infinite learning potential in failure, and, in turn, infinite potential for success.
This is an important way of looking at things. Seeing something as a failure only occurs when there is an absolute expectation of what something should be. The definition of failure is not always the same for different people, so, because there is a subjective aspect to it, instead of doing everything one can not to fail, one can not only choose to accept things as they are so the idea of 'failure' doesn't have to effect you in a negative way, but you can also redefine the idea of what constitutes failure. After all, one man's failure is another man's success.
"Do or do not"-some guy i can't remember... Failure is not only an option.... It is a major part of how we learn.... Make a mistake..."oh i see how i fucked that up" Do better next time....make new mistake....learn new lesson....repeat.... The trick to our failures.....is taking responsibility for them... And using them to our advantage... At this point you have removed the negative from the equation....
It's been a long time habit to make expectations about what I should be. Not only in the way I see myself, but in the way I want others to see me as well, as if I can control how others see me . Que cognitive dissonance. Hell, I've even convinced myself to let others define my success for me. I think dingus had something to say about the effects of that. Fuck it. That's where I'll fuck up. Take it personally or something, put me in the shadows. Shit, I know better. Que that cognitive dissonance again. I'm moving to stop making myself out to be the victim of my own failures and wield them like you would a sword or whatever.
Fuck yes! Own that shit! Anything that removes the negative from the equation..... That shit is only a bad thing if we choose for it to be so.... Like everything else our failures are never more than we make of them...
I'll tell you one simple thing. I would be a far more lost being without all of my mistakes. I like the ideology of this thread, it has some things I can put into practice.
That's why I made it. Just something a little bit more tangible in my endeavors. And of course to welcome the input of others.
Accepting your mistakes, for me, is one thing. Not letting the fear of making them keep me from acting has been much harder for me. This is an important realization for me. Getting past it, in and of itself, is going to be a trial an error process. First of all, I need to find myself in the present. Here I can learn to recognize the mental process as the situations in which it arises. Then I can replace it, change the process. release, replace, repeat. Or, as my band Tool puts it, putrefy, purify, petrify. Of course the idea is to let go of the process entirely but until then.... thoughts?
Mistakes/ failures are such a great learning tool, for learning who you are. This thread is brought about by a culmination of mistakes leading me to realize I need to make them work for me, the way that some do, the way I've always been afraid to. Fuck fear.
Fuck trepidation, fuck fear, fuck everything that keeps you from being all you can be. It just iam worth it to exist in so many places, past and future, it divides your attention and puts cracks in your foundations. You're right about living in the now, I've seen that these past few weeks. I see why I want what I want when I want it. An it's liberating. Now when I make mistakes ican see the thoughts while I make them as if I were doing it now. If any thing starts to run parallel I 'shift gears' and try to realize my failing. I make mistakes, but they become triumphs soon enough.
Keep fucking stacking um they all mine anyhow Pile em high enough ill climb them fucks to the sky That shit belongs to me! Ill do as i please with it fuck letting it drag me down Those are the ways of the past Im not there anymore fuck staring back and cry... Stack that shit and keep fucking climbing!
"I won't be torn between... the man that's in the chair... and the man that's in my dream... gonna melt the two men into one..." -queensryque
Let's look at success for a minute. I want to do this because, even though this thread is to change how we look at failure, it is easy to forget how intricately our view of success is tied in to this. It's easy to say change how you look at failure, but this idea may always fail if we look at this as a means to an end. What I'm trying to say is, it's easy to think we are simply trying to accept failure better when really, that underlying motive is to succeed. I need to change the way I look at success. I can't look for it. I have to remember, failure is simply part of the equation, no way away around it. This does mean I cannot acknowledge success if I get it, but I must look at it as I would failure, a way to learn and continue on in this journey. It cannot be a be all end all approach to somewhere or something. It is another stepping stone. Success and failure, one in the same to some degree.
We can't change how we look at failure only to expect success. Ideas, new and old, can be damaging if we misunderstand them. It may be necessary to experience this damage, but then again it may not be.
But then if we eliminate failure what else is left but success? The idea of failure as a thing, and the idea of feeling a failure in itself, are quite different. Things can fail, but they don't have to be seen purely as having failed. One door closes another one opens. If that thing hadn't failed I wouldn't have met, gone, done . . .