Opening up about failure

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my failures. I usually prefer to focus on my successes and goals, with the mindset that positivity is more productive. We live in a competitive world, and so I think most of us try to emphasise the things that are going well in our lives. That way, at least outwardly, we seem successful, right?

I recently discovered a podcast called How to Fail, hosted by Elizabeth Day. She interviews people who seem highly successful, and asks them what they consider to be their failures in life. Once I started listening, I couldn’t stop. Hearing these people talk about failure was cathartic.

If these people have struggles and failures, too, then maybe it’s okay for me to fail at things. Maybe talking about our failures can help us relate to each other, stop beating ourselves up, and work together to overcome our failures.

So, having rethought my attitude to failure, I’d like to open up about some of the things that feel like failures in my life. Some are big and some are small.

• I feel like I have never done a job really well. I was a shocking waitress, a mediocre cake salesperson, and I haven’t excelled at any of jobs I have done since then, either. [Editor's note: you're doing a great job here! - Ben] This feels like a failure to me, because I have such a strong desire to do a job well. Last year I applied for a job that I really wanted. I poured my heart and soul into the application, and cried for ages when I found out I didn’t get it. That too felt like a failure.
• I persistently fail to do regular exercise. Every year, I make a resolution to exercise more, and it always falls by the wayside. I just find it really hard to make time for it. This doesn’t have a huge impact on my health now, but I’m worried that when I’m older my health will suffer.
• I have failed to become fluent in a second language. I have always had the ambition to speak multiple languages, but I have never had the patience to do the sheer amount of work required. I don’t think I will ever succeed at this.
• I’ve failed to stop climate change. Of course, I know that this is a global issue and not really a personal failure, but I have been worried about climate change for over ten years. I have tried my best to campaign for solutions to climate change over the past few years, and it makes me really sad that it hasn’t been enough.

There are many more. Articulating some of my self-perceived failures is helping me to figure out which failures I should accept, and which ones I can learn from in order to succeed. Most importantly, I'm realising that it's okay to fail sometimes.