Do you sometimes feel like a failure?

Like you’ve stuffed up, made a mistake, or simply aren’t doing as well as you think you could be?

You’re not alone.

Everyone feels this way at some time in their life.

Some people feel like a failure on a daily basis!

For others it’s just a passing fling with failure.

Whatever your experience with failure, know this:

In life you CAN’T fail.

There are NO mistakes.

There really aren’t any.

I know, I know, when our so-called ‘mistakes’ stare us in the face, it can be difficult to find the primary benefit of failing.

Yes, there is a benefit to failing.

It gives us the chance to learn something.

To learn something that will help us on our way to our desired outcome.

Financial Times columnist Tim Harford wrote in his book ‘Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure’: Success comes though rapidly fixing our mistakes, rather than getting things right the first time.’

That does require you to move past your ego and accept all parts of yourself.

Want more help understanding your ego? Take a look at this blog I wrote: Is your ego controlling you?

It is in our nature to expose ourselves to many things, try you ideas, explore, trip up get up, trip up again, and get up once more.

Failure is nothing more than feedback.

Feedback… letting you know a new path is required now.

If you can remove your ego from the equation then that feedback is extremely powerful in helping you move forward.

If you let your ego take hold, then that failure will be your undoing.

Trial and error.

Embrace it!

That is how you get the results you want in life.

That is part of the process.

When you are operating from your childhood conditioning, when you are not being who you true are at your core – love – then you get stressed all the time, and life takes on a more difficult, unfulfilling shape.

You have an inner voice that knows what is right for you.

What you are here to do with this beautiful life you have been gifted.

It is communicating to you every moment of every day, but if you’re too busy rushing about, you won’t hear that voice.

When you stop listening you start to go off track.

You get in the seemingly wrong relationship, you marry the seemingly wrong person, you end up in a job that doesn’t quite hit the ‘Oh Gee’ spot, and you start to feel bitter, exhausted and downright trodden on.

The thing is, all of these apparent ‘mistakes’ or ‘failures’ are leading you to where you need to be.

They are all leading you to your purpose.

You see, there is no such thing as failure.

There are no ‘wrong’ paths.

Failures, mistakes, stuff-ups; these all fuel growth.

They are there to move you in a better direction.

You get as much from you seeming ‘losses’ as you do from your apparent ‘successes’.

The mistakes are there to wake you up!

To get your attention.

To say ‘Hey. It’s now time to move in a different direction’.

To move you out of your comfort zone so you can grow.

And the bigger the meltdown you experience, the bigger the transformation available to you, if you listen to what the failure has to offer you.

Lessons.

HUGE lessons.

And with lessons, comes growth.

When you’re able to understand that your failures are part of the journey, then you no longer get thrown or disheartened by a loss of a job or relationship, a bad grade or a physical injury.
They are simply showing you a new direction.

Your life is so much bigger than any one experience.

We know we are on a detour from our purpose, when we do not feel at ease with ourself.

When life is stressful, feels out of control, when you are paralysed by overwhelm, anxiety or a string of catastrophic life events, that is the cue that you need to be moving in a new direction.

When you feel OFF-course, it’s an opportunity to get back ON-course.

The only way I have created my own happily right NOW, is to stuff up.

LOTS.

To fail…. MANY times.

Yet because I never saw them as failures, but opportunities to grow and learn, that is what I did: Grow and learn.

You are not defined by one moment where you felt like a failure.

You are not defined by that time someone called you a ‘failure’.

Failure doesn’t exist.

Failure is in our mind.

What failure really is, is the catalyst for growth.

When you feel like you have failed, ask yourself one question: What is this here to teach me?

If you take this lesson and act upon it, then you are one step closer to where life wants to take you.

LOVE your failures as much as your wins, for they are the building blocks to your personal kingdom.

LOVE your failures, and they will serve you.

Feel free to leave a comment below sharing your experience with failure and how you were able to find the lesson in it 🙂