Redefining Failure

Failure. To many people, including me, that is a very dirty word. We don’t like to fail. Failing is bad. We look on failure as a negative reflection of ourselves. When we fail we are somehow lesser, unworthy. This is something that I have been struggling a lot with lately. Every time I set a goal and fail to complete it I look at myself as a failure. The problem with this is, when I feel like a failure, then I expect to fail again in the future, and as I fulfill this self-fulfilling prophecy I grow more and more depressed with myself for failing and eventually stop trying all together. This is a vicious cycle.

The past two weeks or so have been especially bad because I got sick. I got absolutely nothing done. I failed. Trying to pick the pieces back up and get motivated to reset my goals, keep going and try again in this new week is harrrrrrrd. What if I fail again? What if I still don’t get everything I want done? Then I will be even more behind and I will never be able to catch up! Do you see the problem with this thinking?

I recently had a conversation with someone about the way we define failure. For me, whether or not I am a failure is attached to an outcome. If I accomplish ‘A,’ then I have found success, if I do not, then I have failed. Looking back over my life I was able to see that I have always defined failure in this way. If I got less than an A or B in school I had failed, if I got less than a Superior rating on my solo I had failed, if I did not keep a clean house I had failed…the list goes on and on.

For most of my life this definition of failure was not much of an issue. School came easy for me, I have always done pretty well at my jobs – I did okay with an outcome based definition of failure. But somewhere along the way things changed. I got married and placed expectations on myself as a wife – like keeping a clean house and cooking – that I was NOT good at. Then I decided to start writing and I set goals for when I would get things done, but as I have mentioned before I am a professional procrastinator and these self-imposed deadlines continue to pass me by unfulfilled. In other words, I keep failing.

Then the person I was talking to said something revolutionary: Why don’t you come up with a different definition of failure? Instead of defining failure by the successful completion of a task, define it by whether or not you try at all. By looking at it this way, if I pick up all the dirty dishes, but don’t have time to get the dusting done, I have still succeeded because I tried and did what I could. If I set a goal to write 3000 words, but am only able to write 1000 that’s okay, I still succeeded because I took the time to write something. If I had not even tried because I knew I wouldn’t have time to get it all done, that would have been the failure.

This is an interesting idea. It goes completely against my way of thinking about things for myself. I don’t have to think twice about giving similar advice or words of encouragement to a friend, but for me? Nope. I don’t give myself that luxury. And I’m not sure why. Growing up, my mother was never one to emphasize the outcome. She always told me and my sister that as long as she saw us trying our hardest it didn’t matter what grade we got in school, even if it was an F. So I am not really sure how that message got reversed in my own thought patterns, but it did.

I know that if I can change my way of thinking to adopt this different definition of failure that it would actually help with the outcomes I currently struggle so much with. I know that this change in thinking will not happen overnight, but I am going to try. I am going to be more conscious of the way I view failure and whether that view serves to motivate me or shackle me. No matter how long it takes, I already know that I am not a failure at it because I am making the choice to take the risk and try. That is success.

How do you define failure? Does your outlook on success and failure motivate or shackle you? Do you get caught in the vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy? Let me know in the comments.

GUEST POST: Marcy Kennedy – Icarus and My Fear of the Sun

I am so excited for today’s guest blogger, Marcy Kennedy. Marcy’s blog, Life at Warp 10, is one  of my absolute favorite blogs. She is a fellow nerd and is a master at taking familiar stories that we nerds love and applying them to real life in some profound way. That is exactly what she has done with today’s guest post, this time through the story of Icarus. Without further ado, I will hand it over.

Icarus and My Fear of the Sun

I have an unusual fear, one I don’t normally talk about. I’m terrified of ending up like Icarus.

Icarus’ story is one most of us have heard. Icarus and his father, Daedalus, were imprisoned in a tower by King Minos so that Daedalus couldn’t share information with the public about the Labyrinth he’d built for Minos. Because Minos guarded both land and sea routes, chances of escape seemed slim.

But Daedalus was a talented inventor. To escape, he created wings from feathers and wax for himself and Icarus. He told Icarus not to fly too high, or the sun would melt the wax holding his wings together, and not to fly too low, because the spray from the sea would saturate the feathers and drag him down.

Partway home, Icarus, drunk on the joy of flying and freedom, forgot his father’s warning and soared too high. The scorching sun melted the wax, he lost all his feathers, and he plunged into the sea below. In the end, he drowned.

Like most people, I’m afraid of failure, of getting my feathers wet because I couldn’t figure out how to fly high enough, and simply sinking away into the sea. Forgotten.

But I’m more afraid of success.

It’s why I don’t know how to take a compliment. The first time my flute teacher told me my low notes sounded full and rich, I can remember not wanting to play any more low notes in front of her. What if that success was a fluke and I couldn’t replicate it? It sounds silly, but it’s true.

Every time I succeed, or receive a compliment, like Icarus I want to fly higher, do better next time. I want the joy in that moment to last forever. But I also I don’t want to disappoint anyone who had great hopes for me. I want to live up to all their good opinions and show them their faith in me was justified. Each success takes me higher and means I have farther to drop should I fall.

And with each success comes the fear that I’ve finally gone too high and reached a level I’m not able to maintain. I’ll scorch my feathers in the sun and free fall, disappointing everyone who glued a feather onto my wings.

I think, though, that I might have finally figured out the secret to staying in the air, even if I start to fall. Icarus and his father were alone on their flight, so his father couldn’t warn him in time and, when Icarus fell, his father wasn’t able to save him. One set of wings wasn’t enough to hold up two people.

But two or three sets of wings might have been able to support the additional weight. If we surround ourselves by a loyal group of friends rather than going it alone or only flying with one, we’ll have people who can catch us before it’s too late. We’ll also have extra sets of eyes to warn us if we start to fly too high and take on more than we’re capable of handling. Together, we’ll all be able to reach our goals.

Are you more afraid of success or of failure? Who do you look to when you’re afraid you’re about to fall?

Marcy Kennedy is a fantasy author who also works as a freelance writer for magazines, newspapers, and non-profits and a freelance editor for both businesses and individuals. Her current work-in-progress is a co-written historical fantasy about Amazons. When she’s not wrestling unruly commas, she spends her time with her equally nerdy husband, her Great Dane, and more cats than she’s willing to admit to in public. You can visit her at her blog, Life At Warp 10.