The baggage of failure
Does the memory of past failures weigh you down? Are you scared to fail again?
Lets use an example to understand this. There’s a little girl who’s learning to run on her two feet. For the first hundred times if not more whenever she gives it a go, she falls. So we could say that she FAILS a hundred times.
However, she doesn't know what failure is and is too young to understand what failure feels like. Her natural response is to fall, rest and try again after a while because she’s already forgotten that she fell some time back. Eventually she succeeds.
How are we different? This is how adults do things:
We have a goal we want to achieve. We start working for it and give it a go. We fail. We remember that we must try again so that’s what we do. We fail again. We go at it again and fail again. Now failure starts getting to us because we can remember that we’ve failed many times. Consequently we start carrying in our memory ‘the baggage of failure’.
As time goes on, the thought of failure makes us anxious. We don’t want to keep walking down a road that DOES NOT make us feel GOOD.
What’s the result? Our chances of succeeding drop. Is it because we failed? No, it is not. It happens because we carry the baggage (memory of emotions experienced) of our past failures in our mind and heart. We also want to be cool (aka successful) in our own eyes and the eyes of people around us and thus, the possibility of failing again is terrifying.
The child doesn’t care about being cool. She doesn’t know what failure is or feels like. Hence, she succeeds eventually.
As we grow up, we tend to remember our experiences so we can learn from them but not everything is worth remembering and storing in our memory. Don’t let your failures stay with you for too long and become baggage that weighs you down. Don’t get unduly attached to the past.
The past is only a fragment of your life but if you let it take over your mind it becomes a fear you carry everywhere you go. The fear holds you back and keeps you from realising your potential and your dreams.
Recognise your fear for what it is: a thought, an idea, a story with an unhappy ending that your mind tells you even though the future is full of possibilities. Don't let a scary thought dictate your future. Go again, try again and again.
Be like a child. Fall down 7, get up 8. Get back up and go again till the fear ceases to exist and you can't help yourself from flying. Because you are truly capable of doing everything we can dream of.