Oct. 22, 2001
Being a writer, being in control and doing what I love to do, I have weathered far less failures than life in the Corporate World.
Before I used to have jobs I failed at, job relationships I failed at, daily tasks I failed at. I wasn’t going up the ladder fast enough, I wasn’t getting something done fast enough, I wasn’t building my career fast enough. I felt like everyday I was drowning and failing.
However, now I don’t have that. Now what I have instead are things that “just didn’t work out.”
If I write an article that wasn’t the best or didn’t get accepted, I don’t see that as failure – it just didn’t work out. If I tried to do a painting and it came out really horrible, I don’t consider it a failure – it just didn’t work out. If I thought I’d do A,B,C today but instead I did X,Y, & Z I didn’t fail – my original plan just didn’t work out.
Now, I don’t have timelines with regards to where I need to be in my career. If I just wanted to write magazine articles for 10 years, there is no failure there. If I were in the Corporate World and in the same position for that long without title changes and promotions, I’d be seen as a failure. If at some point I don’t want to write full time, but instead teach art and do public speaking on living your dream, it didn’t mean that I failed at writing, but now I’m just doing something else. If at some point I feel that art isn’t where I need to be and I drop it, it doesn’t mean that I failed at it and my time learning about it was a waste, it just meant that I’m going to try a new direction.
If I skipped around that much in the Corporate World I’d be seen as a flighty failure and someone you shouldn’t hire because I would be unstable. I see it as being creative and trying so many things – some of which I love and some of which just didn’t work out.
I think that transformation of thinking has been one of the most subtly wonderful things that’s happened so far. It’s been extremely empowering. I have a power now that I didn’t have when I was in the Corporate World.
Even when I first started this, I didn’t have that power because I was very afraid of failing. The fear of failing hung very heavy on me because it had been so ingrained into my head that if you didn’t do things a certain way, for certain people and at certain times, you were, in fact, a failure. And instead of remembering and being proud of the 17 things I had accomplished in a day, it would always be the one failure I would remember. And that one failure would have more power than anything else.
But now I realise what failure really is and that you can only fail in one of two ways. One is by either not trying. And two is by comparing yourself to others.
I’m trying my arse off here and I’m not comparing. There is no comparing. All I can do is what I need to do. How can one ever fail at that?