Monday Morning Memo: On Failure

"I have missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost three hundred games. On twenty-six occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot-and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed." - Michael Jordan

The first thing I want to say, is before anything else, we are "creators". We create. And as creators, we are always fine tuning. A sculpture starts as a block of clay and then becomes something. I love Michelangelo's quote: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

My friend, Jennifer Perlmutter, just had a show called "BUILD". In her artist statement she says this:

Artist Statement: Build: the standard of construction of something, to assemble. Life is the on-going process of making mistakes and learning, taking risks, failing, succeeding, thriving, struggling, building and re-building oneself in the process.

I love this because it speaks to failure and triumph. Her process when she starts on a piece of canvas or wood is to lay a foundation and then build on it. She lets it sit, goes back to it and if she doesn't like how it's turning out, she adds another layer, the layer before becoming the foundation for the next layer which adds texture, depth and character.

This is how it goes with failure. There is no failure. There is only a layering of life. Everyone starts somewhere and then builds their way up. And as we build our way up, we learn new things, become stronger people, discover talents we would have otherwise never known we had.

When you are "failing" it only means one thing: You're in the game. And you are on your way to your next success.

That's all it means.

Because one thing is for sure. If you're not failing, you're not trying. And if you're not trying, you're not in the game. And if you're not in the game, you will never know the outcome.

And isn't that what we're here for? To discover our potential?

I live by Martha Grimes saying, "We don't know who we are until we see what we can do".

We are creators. We are artists with the blank canvas in front of us being our life. It is in our nature to create, to express, to expand, to unfold, to transform, to communicate.

To triumph.

But we first have to get in the game. We have to be willing to come out from hiding.

I read this saying in a book "The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything".

How true.

Failure is not whether you "succeed" at the objective or not. Failure is in not attempting the objective. If you attempt and don't get the results you want, you still succeeded in learning something new. Perhaps, now you are ready to apply a different strategy.

Aside from learning something new, failure also teaches us something about ourselves.

It teaches us that we are resilient, that we are alive, that we have the courage to attempt what others do not, that we are willing to stand out, that we are willing to stand up. That we are willing to TRY.

And how beautiful it is to know these things about ourselves.

This week, consider your relationship to failure and see if you can't befriend it in a new way.
See if you can't view it as a PART of your success. It is not "either/or", but "both/and". You don't fail or succeed. You fail AND succeed and you grow as a result of it. As a result of all of it.

"As the marble wastes, the statue grows." - Michelangelo

In other words, as we pare away and learn from our mistakes (or what we might consider "failures"), we grow in stature, in experience, in strength.

If Michael Jordan quit the game after any number of his failures, we wouldn't have Michael Jordan. He simply stayed in the game.

And that's what it's all about.

But we first have to start. We have to get in the game. We have to release the constraints we have placed on ourselves for perfection and give ourselves permission to fail.

Even if only to simply give ourselves permission to succeed.

In an effort to keep these short (I really do try!), there is often, much I leave out in favor of brevity. If you would like to apply some of the work or readings to your own life, and you need help, feel free to contact me for a free 15 minute consultation. sonya@omfreely.com

If you have comments or would like a topic addressed in a future Monday Morning Memo, feel free to share your thoughts: sonya@omfreely.com