Reclaiming failure is the fastest way to “have it all”
Most “successful” adults are walking around anxiously afraid of failure.
The fear of failure can help you succeed professionally to a certain point, but if fear is your driver, then it will be a struggle to enjoy your successes. You'll be too focused on the potential failure that could happen with one bad review, one wrong decision, or one mistake. So you'll look successful, yet feel anxiously on edge most of the time - waiting for it all to be taken away by that one slip up.
The upside for any boss is that the strategies for professional success that failure avoidants use - the over-achieving, the aversion to take risks, the lack of boundaries with team members, the eagerness to please, and the perfectionism (control) make for an anxiously agreeable employee. It, however, is also what's blocking any ability to have a balanced life that feels as good as it appears.
Unfortunately, the same strategies keeping you moving up the career ladder are simultaneously blocking your ability to have long lasting emotional connection with others and a deep sense of security when facing the unknown. In short, it keeps you disconnected from the vulnerability of living. You stay a prisoner to the unknown, and a member of the walking dead.
My clients think it's one or the other when we begin working together. They believe it’s a choice between being happy professionally or being happy personally. They are either anxiously successful (while escaping with fantasy relationships or addictions) or career-less and unfulfilled, but “safe”.
I get it. I used to think that too.
The place to start reclaiming your life, while creating something new, is to change your relationship to failure. That doesn’t mean you have to love when things don’t go as planned. It means, learning how to manage the feeling of disappointment and transition without it derailing you mentally and emotionally. It means, living with an embodiment of trust that life has something in store because YOU are deserving and worthy of good things. It’s completely possible to do this, and it’s where your ability to LIVE and LOVE begins.
- Legan
