Several months ago, I attended a dynamic workshop for career women, facilitated by a female psychologist. All the workshop participants had to do an exercise in which we checked off a list of things that we had failed at doing. The "failures" among this group of highly successful women were numerous: failed classes and failed relationships; failed bar exams and failed businesses; failed comprehensive exams and failed dissertation defenses. And yet, an outsider considering this group of women gathered would have considered each one a "success" story, all currently excelling in their careers as lawyers, doctors, professors, wives, mothers, and various other roles.
That exercise has stayed with me for months, as I reflected on the facilitator's powerful words: "successful women are those who have not allowed their failures to define them." She continued in her assessment by reminding us that successful people fall down, as everyone does, but they get back up again and again. And while this was a secular workshop, I left humming the words to gospel singer Donnie McClurken's song: "we fall down/but we get up/for a saint is just a sinner who fell down/and got up."
As encouraged as I was by this workshop, I know myself to be a person who is haunted by her failures and who does not let go of them easily. I have failed at many things; important things. And sometimes people I love have failed me; important people. And while I have "gotten up" after all these moments, I struggle with not judging myself solely by these failures.
But a real moment of healing took place in my life when I stopped feeling afraid to fail. Each failure has been a learning experience, a building block in my life. Each failure has led to a new discovery about myself and about others. I've learned about real friendship, real loyalty, and real trust only because of failed friendships and failed loyalty and failed trust. And even in those dark moments, when my very faith has failed, God has always and abundantly brought me to a greater level of spiritual intimacy. So I'm learning not to fear the failures, which are simply inevitable. I am learning, each day, to focus not only on the number of times I've fallen down, but to celebrate those occasions in which I've gotten up, again and again.
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2 comments:
I gasped when I read this post.
And then I cried.
Almost all of my private journal entries this month have been about understanding/embracing my failures and my fear of failing. This somewhat irrational fear has kept me from life itself. Suddenly (or at least what felt like "suddenly"), it occurred to me that moving forward is going to depend on the way I deal with real failure and how imagine impending failure. I know, now, that my success is intricately connected to the way I experience failure.
Thank you for sharing; I needed to read this post.
Emerson Zora Hamsa :)
Hallelujah! Thank you for this word of liberation. It's so timely for this season of my life, which has been all about not wanting to fail, self and others. Yet this has causes copious amounts of anxiety, which is nothing but fear. But thanks be to God! I know I am called to a greatness. It's times of failure that can be part of the experience to getting there.
In the words of Marianne Williamson, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
Thanks Dr. Pierce for reminding me I AM powerful beyond measure.
Blessings to you!
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