Failure. I’m thinking about giving myself permission to fail. What, the rest of the world has already done that? News to me. It may be true in Pinterest quotes but I’m not seeing it in the real world so I’m gonna give it an honest-to-goodness, legit effort. Actual permission. Actual failure. Actual forgiveness. Permission to get it wrong (already done) and allowance for a second effort. AND if that effort fails….we start the cycle over again. If the road that I am traveling the second time veers from the road that failed the previous time, I think I’ll be able to keep myself out of the looney bin.
Too often in my life I have felt like my acceptance of myself was based on accomplishment and appearance. I set these unattainable goals for myself (big business, little thighs – 30 days - You go girl!). Then I’d grab myself by the shoulders for a real heart-to-heart talk about hard work and sacrifice. This line of reasoning, as you may have figured out already, is bullshi*t.
You know what happens the second day of the goal-bound-journey: ANYTHING. Anything can get in the way; family; weather; periods; cookies. You know the routine. Now all is lost. All that first day effort is wasted, right? Am I alone in this? Anyone else give up the good fight because you didn’t stay the straight and narrow course? What if there was permission to say, ‘Yep, blew that day. Lesson learned, value gained, try again tomorrow.’
Did I just say value? Yep, sure did. If there’s no value in the failure, then I really am in trouble, but I think I if dig deep enough every failure provides ‘value’ in the lesson. AND since I so very obviously have so much yet to learn I anticipate some additional failures – LOTS of them. Big ones and little ones but think of ALL that there is to be learned. I’m not going to just give myself permission to fail, I’m going to embrace every mistake with my monocle eye piece like Sherlock Holmes searching for clues to the lesson enclosed in the cookie. Ahoy, failure ahead!