#masculinity #selfimprovement #motivation Failure stings. Failure burns. Failure can be the heart of your dreams being ripped out from you, and crushed before your eyes. Failure is shameful, painful, humiliating. And it, like much of the unpleasantries of life, is unavoidable. I’ve been writing this post, and re-writing it, for about 3 days now. Every so often I get reflective. I have a long memory. Perhaps not quite eidetic, but very vivid and far-reaching. I remember a lot of painful memories, humiliating moments, being a mess of a person. And for reasons best known to itself (it hasn’t opened up and explained it to me yet) my mind likes to wander there sometimes. Failures in career, failures socially, failures creatively; romantically, interpersonally, academically or in any other facet of modern life, all sting, all crush. Any time you set yourself some kind of barometer, some kind of goal, you open yourself up to failing at it. Any time you hope for something you invite potential devastation. Worse still, success might taste sweet — honeyed and delightful, bringing high spirits — but it is only temporary. It lingers for a brief burst of time and fades. Failure, eerily, is also temporary as a state, but one than last much longer and can creep in at the edges of life, always there as a grinning reminder of inadequacy. I’m no novice when it comes to failure. My life, such as it is, has been failing upwards. No matter how indifferent you try to make yourself, no matter how much you try to lash out or project the blame, failure is always painful. (Believe me, I’ve tried and you've tried as well). A stunning, stinging reminder of imperfection. An inglorious kick down into the dirt. Failure isn’t necessarily a tremendous collapse of everything in life either, it doesn’t have to be a great failure to hurt: even the disappointment of not meeting set-standards or expectations, or realization that we’ve betrayed core values within ourselves, can result in internal agony. Our interiority can be very fragile, sometimes. I think one counter to failure is to treat it as a lesson. Failures can be teachable moments, however shameful, embarrassing, frustrating or agonizing they appear to be initially. Failure can help us improve as people, creatives, intellectuals, workers, friends and whatever else we can be. What can be worse than “failing”? The answer is: not even trying. ‘The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried’, said Stephen McCranie. If you stop trying or never begin in the first place simply because you either “fell down” before or are afraid to fail, you’ll never know how it could have worked out. The feeling of “what if…” will follow you day and night. Of course, everybody starts a project in order to make it real. But if things don’t work out like you wish due to external circumstances, you’ll be able to learn from this experience. And know what you should change next time, how to take a different route or, what to look for in new goals (all of these options are, in my experience, freeing). There is a phrase that I think “fits” perfectly in this case: “God: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. Regardless of whether you are or aren’t a religious person (I am not), it’s always important to analyze what depends on you and what doesn’t. It is in your hands to do your best, but there can be many other external factors involved (political, economic, contact networks) that may or may not be on your side. Knowing this will help you not to blame the “forces” you are battling nor to “victimize” yourself, but get you motivated to keep going to the next point. Are you the same as you were years ago? After I just graduated I made many ‘mistakes’ during my first job and also second job. But I embraced them because they allowed me to become the person that I am now. I can do things better than before. And I know there is always something new to learn from future mistakes. Every “fall” makes you stronger, as long as you are willing to get back up. May this beautiful quote from the book “Siddhartha”, by Hermann Hesse, help you to keep it in mind: “We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps”.