WHAT SUCCESS NEVER TAUGHT ME

Failure sits you down, looks you in the eye and says, right let’s go through this properly, shall we?

Hi dear one. This one is free for everyone, as always. Paid subscribers also get it in my voice, so I can ramble to you properly while you make your tea. If what I write adds a little something to your week, come join me.

I don’t keep track of my failures.

Maybe I should, some people do, apparently there are journals for it. But no. And God knows I have a few in my luggage. Some small and easily forgotten, some that took up an entire suitcase of their own for a while. I’ve dragged them through airports, so to speak, wondering why my arms were so tired.

It’s never nice to fail. Let’s just say that out loud before we get all wise about it. But yep, so necessary.

Last week I wrote about seeking discomfort, about doing the thing while the mind screams noooo. And I think these two go hand in hand, really. Because what is that scream mostly about? What is the flutter in the gut actually afraid of?

Failure

That’s the monster under the bed. Not the discomfort itself, but the possibility that we’ll do the scary thing and it won’t work. That we’ll try, in front of everyone or just in front of ourselves, and fall flat. You can’t seek discomfort without inviting the possibility of failure along. They arrive as a package deal, like a plus one you never put on the guest list.

And that fear is real. I know it is, I feel it too. It truly is never fun to fail and realise, wops… this didn’t work out the way I thought.

The bit where it just feels bad

Something I’ve noticed, when failure happens, the circumstances don’t really matter. Whether it failed because of bad timing, bad luck, someone else, the economy, Mercury doing whatever Mercury does, or plain old me getting it wrong… in the moment, it all feels the same.

It feels bad. 🙄

There’s the sting, the hot face. The instant replays the mind insists on running, usually at two in the morning, in high definition, with commentary. There’s the urge to explain it to everyone, or to explain it to no one and quietly pretend the whole thing never happened.

And I want to say this clearly, because I think we skip it too often in our rush to be positive, it’s allowed to feel bad. You don’t have to leap straight to the silver lining like some spiritual gymnast. When something you hoped for, worked for, maybe even told people about, doesn’t work out, there is a small grief in that. Let it be there. Make it a cup of tea. It won’t stay forever.

The chatty mind, at it again

Because of course, the mind has plenty to say about failure. This is where our old friends from last week come back in: the vrittis, the swirls and loops of the mind, the broken record of past programming and conditioning.

When we fail, the record doesn’t just play, it puts on a full concert. See? I told you. You’re not capable. Who did you think you were? Everyone saw. You should never have tried.

Notice something about that voice? It’s never talking about the thing that failed. It’s talking about you. It takes one event, one outcome that didn’t land, and tries to turn it into an identity. The project failed becomes I am a failure. And those are two completely different sentences. One is information. The other is a lie wearing the costume of a fact.

The thing failed. You did not. You are the one still standing there, holding the lessons.

The audit I end up doing

Here’s what happens for me, every single time.

The uncomfortable bad feeling of failure eventually calms down in the chatty mind. It always does, though never as quickly as I’d like. But it’s getting better and better with practise. And when the noise settles, when the two in the morning replays finally get bored of themselves, I look at the whole thing again.

And every time, I’m a little stunned by how much I learned.

Things I could never have learned from a book, a course, or someone else’s cautionary tale. What actually works and what only works in my head. Where my energy goes and where it leaks. Who shows up when things wobble. What I care about enough to try again, and what I only thought I wanted. Failure hands you information about yourself that success simply doesn’t bother to collect.

Success is a lovely teacher, but a vague one. It pats you on the head and says well done, carry on. Failure sits you down, looks you in the eye and says right, let’s go through this properly, shall we?

In yoga philosophy there’s a beautiful thread about this, we’re invited to do our work fully, wholeheartedly, and then loosen our grip on the outcome. Act, but don’t let the result own you. Easier said than done, I know, we covered that last week. But failure is where that teaching stops being a nice idea and becomes practice. Can I have poured myself into something, watched it not work out, and still know that I am fine? That my worth was never sitting inside the outcome in the first place?

Some days, yes. Some days, absolutely not, and I eat some chocolate and try again tomorrow. That’s practice too.

Unpacking the luggage

So no, I don’t keep track of my failures. I don’t have a list. But I’ve stopped dragging them around as dead weight, and that shift changed everything.

Because luggage, it turns out, depends entirely on what you believe is inside it. For a long time I thought mine was full of evidence. Proof of what I couldn’t do, shouldn’t try, had no business attempting. Heavy stuff. But when I actually opened it up and looked, properly looked, it wasn’t evidence at all.

It was equipment

Every failure in there had greatly turned into something useful. A skill, a boundary, a better question, a thicker skin in the right places and a softer heart in the others. The luggage was never holding me back. I just hadn’t unpacked it.


I still don’t like failing. I doubt I ever will, and I don’t trust anyone who claims they do. The sting is real, the fear of it is real, and pretending otherwise is just another way of not being honest.

But I no longer treat failure as a verdict. It’s a receipt. Proof that I actually tried something, that I stepped out of the comfortable seat and had a go while the mind was busy screaming its noooo. You cannot fail at something you never attempted, and truly, that’s the only failure I’d sincerly regret now, the attempt that never happened.

Perhaps the very luggage you’ve been carrying around as evidence is flawed. It’s the weight that still whispers, ‘See, you can’t.’ Let this be your nudge to open the suitcase and look inside. I suspect you’ll find, just as I did, that it ceased being proof a very long time ago.
It’s been equipment all along.

Until next time stay curious and very grateful
Light and joy,

Kim

P.S. Paid subscribers get this article in my voice. Pop in your earbuds and let me ramble to you properly.