Episode 132: Failure is a Sacred Rite
In this episode, Alisha is taking you down her journey on the topic of Failure as a Sacred Rite. Hear how many TEDx Conferences Alisha has applied to this far, find out what Alisha has learned so far from interviewing 18 of 50 people on the topic of failure and what she hopes you’ll take away from all of this.
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Episode 132: In this episode, Alisha is taking you down her journey on the topic of Failure as a Sacred Rite. Hear how many TEDx Conferences Alisha has applied to this far, find out what Alisha has learned so far from interviewing 18 of 50 people on the topic of failure and what she hopes you’ll take away from all of this.
Episode 132 Notes: Failure is a Sacred Rite
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Episode 132 Transcript:
Last month at the very beginning of April, I was talking with my RAW group (the morning group where we all log onto zoom, pull an oracle card, I give a writing prompt we all go on mute for a little while and then come back to talk through what came up for each of us), this is a powerful impactful community that walks with women through there own personal journeys and believe me this group is so special, you don’t want to miss it. There will be a link to it in today’s show notes) on this particular day someone said something along the lines of Failure, it’s not really failure if you learned something and I said hold up that’s wrong. I don’t agree with that. Failure is failure and it’s not bad or good. I think it’s imperative that we own our failures. Well this triggered a lot of feels and discission for everyone. We ended up talking about it almost all week.
This topic seemed to spark something in everyone. Everyone in RAW had an opinion about failure.
I encountered this once before, when I closed the yoga studio I wrote a blog post that I had failed to meet my original goal when I opened the yoga studio and I considered that failure. No one wanted to let me call it a failure.
But Webster Defines failure as not meeting an intended goal. That’s it, neither positive nor negative. Failure is neutral.
What I found in talking about failure with RAW is that many people associate failing with being a failure. That is an easy rabbit hole to allow yourself to fall down, but the truth is that failure is an integral step in the learning and growth process.
The same week that we were talking about RAW I had a workshop with Abbey Gibb (who also happens to be the sponsor of today’s show) on how to lad a TEDx Talk, abbey talk with us about how we have to be able to tell our story in five words. I knew instantly that my topic had to be around failure because everyone has a feeling and opinion about the topic.
I landed on my five words which are “Failure is a Sacred Rite”. And I’ll say more about that in a little while.
I’m on this journey of trying to land a TEDx talk and have a goal of applying to at least 20 TEDx conferences and I’ve now applied to 15 conferences and have already been told by one of them that i was not picked.
During this time a friend of mine also told me that she was applying for a book writing program that helps first time authors not only complete their book in 1 year but also get their book published.
I had an interview with the program creator, got in and he told me to start reading books, listening to podcasts, and talking to people about failure. I challenged myself to interview 50 people on failure for the book. As of last week, I had interviewed 18 people on the topic of failure. Today I wanted to share with you about what I’ve been learning.
I want to write this book on failure and I want to give this talk around failure because Chances unless you’re not human, you’ve had experience with failure of some kind. If I asked a room full of people if they have ever failed, every hand would have to go up. Everyone has experienced a failure of some sort because it's an integral part of growth and learning. But here’s the thing, Fear of failure keeps us from going after our dreams, Fear of failure keeps us from starting that business we’ve been dreaming of, or asking out the person we’ve been crushing on. I’m doing this research, trying for this TEDx talk and writing this book because I want all of us to learn how to move through fear of failure to take risks to get back on the horse when we fall off, to repeatedly go after the things we want until we either don’t want them anymore or until we get them. Failure does lead us to growth, success, and learning. When we view failure as a sacred rite three things happen First we learn to expect failure and plan for it. Second, we learn what to do to process and distill failure into powerful learning and truth when it happens. And third, we learn how to talk to and help others when they encounter failure.
So here is what I’ve been learning so far…
failure is really a spectrum. On one end we have things like learning to walk or ride a bike, or killing the plant we’ve been trying to keep alive
in the middle, we have bigger failures that can be things like …
not being able to get the score we needed on the LSAT to get into LAW school
Not getting into the master’s program we wanted
Not getting the job we worked really hard for
Failing the test or tests
Auditioning for the part we really wanted and not getting it.
Asking someone out and being turned down
The business we opened failing
Getting rejected by publishers
Almost failing out of college or failing out of college.
These more middle spectrum failures like a marriage failing, a relationship failing, getting fired from a job, sometimes they can be foundational failures in that they help us learn more about ourselves, they help us see what we are made of and capable of. These failures are often foundational in that they can change the trajectory of our lives. They often help us uncover our true selves and the core of our beings.
Now on the very far end of the spectrum, we have what I consider catastrophic failures. These catastrophic failures in my opinion are the ones where there is death, loss of life. I’ll share more on them later.
For this episode, I want to focus on the middle spectrum failures, the ones that sting the ones that might have stopped us in our tracks a bit. But first I laid to lay some ground rules for how we talk about failures…
Listen I know first hand how badly it can sting to fail, I’m 38 and never married you can imagine the number of failed relationships I have under my belt, My first business did nothing but lose money for 5 years, I applied for 3 management positions while I worked at the insurance company I spent a decade at and was never what they wanted. I’ve even been fired from a job I cared about. Heck, I’ve now been turned away from at least 6 TEDx conferences over the past 5 years. I know a lot about failure, but what I also know is that even what it might feel like it, we, you and me, humans we can’t be failures. Failure is an event it’s not a person. And when we honor failure as a rite that everyone experiences we can help separate failure from feeling like a failure. When we are willing to own our failures and when appropriate we share them publicly we can help each other embrace failure for what it is, a natural part of the learning process. Neutral, neither good nor bad. Failure is only harmful when we connect it to our selfworth. Failure is not a part of your true self.
Like I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve now interviewed 18 people and I’m ending up talking about it with everyone! And whether you are 8 or 108 I guarantee you have an opinion about failure.
Early on I was interviewing Abigail Dowd who was on the podcast a little while and she said something I thought that was very interesting. She said that all of the things that outwardly looked like successes were really failures because she wasn’t listening to her own intuition. She said when she quit the art schools she had built from the ground up, when she stepped down from city council and ran away to Italy, outwardly it looked like she was failing, but inwardly she was succeeding because it was the first time she had listened to her own inner voice, her true self.
Abigail and I also talked about how when she was processing her failures she felt like she “had to go retrieve the parts of herself that she had left behind and kill off the parts of herself that weren’t hers”.
All of us have a process of working through a failure whether we know it consciously or not.
I’m learning through all of these interviews that those who are able to distill the most learning, and growth from failure are those that do a few things and maybe not in this order but these are what need to happen.
First: you feel the feelings, you allow yourself to wallow and grieve whatever took place
Second: Own what happened and your part in it. Maybe this means even apologizing to someone, including yourself. You may need to forgive yourself.
Third: Process, really think through what happened, why it happened and what we could do in the future to have a different outcome. Some people even like to do a SWOT analysis on what happened.
Fourth: Surround yourself with community and specifically the right community that you can talk to about what happened who will help you own, and process what happened in a healthy and supportive way. Because community helps dissolve the place where you feel like a failure. The right community is alchemy they help you transmute the failure into learning.
Fith: We have to get back on the horse and take recovering actions. We have to essentially try, try again.
Failure is the stripping away of the unnecessary to get to the core to get to the heart of who we are, what we love, what we want and are willing to work for. I think repeated failures help us align with our values and figure out what we most want and desire. Failure is feedback. Internalizing failure will keep us out of action. If you can take your ego out of the failure process it really helps us turn failure into fuel.
I want to leave you with a question tonight. What haven’t you tried because you are afraid of failing? Or where have you tried failed once or twice and given up? Do you still want that thing? Can you get back up on the horse?
Because what I know to be true is something my friend Vicotria brownlee said in her failure interview, she said “Successful people have a common experience of failure” Where are you willing to fail? Where are you willing to try, because if we aren’t willing to try, we will probably have to deal of the pain of regret. If you go practice failure and have an experience you want to tell me about shoot me an email.
Do you have questions you want me to answer on the show? Email me at awielfaert@yokeandabundance.com
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