The Hidden Gift of Failure - Week #50 of The Awakening Journey

For many of us, fear of failure stops us from taking risks, expanding outward, speaking our truth, and achieving success. In our journey here together, we have been pointing to your fear being the root cause of your challenges.

[I was recently challenged to stop creating fear. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn’t. What about when it doesn’t work and fear does get created?]

Many people tell themselves that they don’t have fear and they certainly aren’t making decisions out of fear. Or at least their ego tells them this story. And many of us believe it. But the truth is that as human beings, we create fear.

And underpinning so much of our fear is the fear of failure.

Even though cognitively we know that children learn by failing, by making mistakes, we still fear failing. In reality, failure is what we need to experience in order to grow.

This week you are going to learn how to leverage your fear of failure to create success!

The Roots of Our Fear of Failure

We are conditioned this way. We learn at an early age that when we fail and make mistakes people are disappointed. Then we build up a story that we must not fail. Failure means losing stuff, love, money, and belonging.

Growing up, my parents acted like they had all the answers to everything. When I realized, as all kids do, that they were not omniscient, I felt [distrusting]. Perhaps they feared failing as parents.

I know when I first found out we were expecting, I wanted to be a “perfect parent” so I definitely shared this fear of failure as a parent. While also knowing cognitively that I needed to fail. An impossible dichotomy.

How Do We Stop This Crazy Train?

Through practice. Did I say practice as in practice at failing? Yep. I sure did.

And by embracing the truth. The truth is that every time we fail, every time we feel fear, every time we fall down, it is a GIFT.

How is it a gift to lose business, and clients, make a bad investment, lose your influence or even fail at a conversation?

Because when we fail, and we truly embrace that failure, when we slow down enough, we can receive the gift. The gift is to learn how to evolve.

What would it be like to really embody this truth? Would it feel like relief, peace, wonder, awe? When you feel like you fall down on your bum, would you be able to laugh at yourself and model that to everyone around you?

Walking Through The Doorway That is Your Evolution

As my parenting progressed and my daughters became more verbal, I was able to share some of my failures. I even added to our dinner conversation “Share one thing you failed at today” so they could see that.

My daughter Olivia and I just had a conversation where we were talking about parenting and I shared with her the paradox of wanting to challenge your child to a higher way of being in the world while also holding that she is enough just as she is. It feels like a tightrope walk sometimes.

Sharing this “failure” with her created an opening for me to step into, a doorway into my own evolution.

Embracing failure and knowing it is meant to be is freeing. It feels like peace and empowerment. And a leveling up of yourself in your evolution as a human. Embracing failure feels like freedom.