Friday Musings—08/09/23

If you haven't read it yet, this week's post was the final installment of our series devoted to taking steps towards building a life we love. As always, share any insights or questions you may have on the topic in the comments, or send me an email—I'm always happy to chat. You can also book a free call with me.

Now onto my weekly musings 😎

Failure as a source of discovery

In my musings last week, I shared how most of my life has been dominated by several fears. One of the main fears I've grappled with is the fear of failure, or more precisely, the fear around how other people would judge me and abandon me due to my failures. This fear has its roots in my childhood, as many of our beliefs and conditionings do, and it has significantly impacted my adult life. Over the past year, I've been working on reframing failure as something that's totally acceptable and not a moral failing on my part. In fact, failure may also be viewed as positive in some respects. It's proof that you're taking risks, learning, experimenting, and actively pursuing personal growth.

As I mentioned in my post on action bias, high-performers tend to prefer taking action, accepting the possibility of failure, rather than doing nothing and playing it safe. That's how they progress in their life and career, build new things, spread ideas, etc. And yet, many of us perceive failure as something inherently bad, even shameful. We are conditioned to believe that we should try to avoid it at any cost, and when we do fail, we often feel compelled to hide it and move on as quickly as possible. Social media only exacerbates this issue, I believe. People tend to present a carefully curated version of their lives online, so we get the impression that everyone else is "winning". As a consequence, we're more likely to showcase only the highlights of our lives, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

However, we have the power to break free from this cycle. This insightful article explores how we can learn to reframe failure as an opportunity for discovery and personal development. This perspective shift allows us to recognize failure as evidence of our shared humanity, fostering a sense of inclusion rather than isolation and ostracism. The key lies in replacing fear and shame with curiosity and a commitment to growth. The author argues that most of us could benefit from experiencing more failures, provided they are "intelligent failures", ones that lead us to take on new challenges. Of course, this doesn't mean that we should disregard established best practices in certain contexts, such as making sure a surgeon operates on the correct knee. But when venturing into new territory, experimentation is essential, and with it comes the inherent risk of failure. This concept aligns with the ideation-experimentation-iteration feedback loop we've discussed as part of the process to building a life we love.

Now, I'd like to hear about your attitude towards failure. Do you agree with the writer's take on the matter, or do you view failure as something to fear? Do you have any examples to share re: what you've learned from your own failures?

Poet's corner

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

The older I get, the more I enjoy spending time in nature. In fact, I now crave this deeper connection with our beautiful Mother Earth, and there's plenty of science to confirm the huge benefits that being in nature has on our well-being. I was recently moved by Mary Oliver's beautiful When I am Among the Trees and I wanted to share it as a reminder to carve out some time this weekend to go and hug a tree (attaching pic of me hugging a tree in Ireland as gentle encouragement!), watch a squirrel, arrange a picnic in the park, be near a body of water. Fill yourself with light, and shine.

Quote of the week ✍️

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one". (Elbert Hubbard)

That's all from me today, enjoy your weekend and TTYS

ML