Love Your Journey: Notes from the Failure Salon on June 23, 2016

Session Opener

  • Famous Failures (check the Pinterest board for the image)
  • Centering exercise: Imagine you have achieved the highest level of success you could ever imagine for yourself.  Now think about the successes you've had so far in life.  Now think about all the times you've failed.  What would people say about you if you were on the "Famous Failures" poster?  Example: At age 10 she was the worst dancer in her class - not flexible, couldn't remember the steps - but she went on to teach dance to hundreds of students.

 

How do you define success/failure?

  • Battle of head v. heart
  • Failure implies something negative
    • No - it's about experience - if you don't try you don't know
  • What you need is within you
  • Setting boundaries
  • Discrimination of your input - everyone's job is to take care of themselves
  • Success = freedom
    • Doing whatever I want whenever I want
    • Being able to make up your own mind
  • Mindfulness - appreciate where you're at - while reaching for a bigger goal
  • Autonomy = freedom
  • Having a bigger purpose
  • Joy = success
  • Choice
  • Finding a mission/purpose that you can make money from
  • Feeling success without achieving ultimate goal
  • Self-rewarding

 

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it's the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves.  For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy." ~ Brene Brown, Rising Strong

It seems like we're trying to AVOID failure - WHY?

  • Definition of failure has changed over time
  • Originally was defined by parents
  • See the end result(success)
  • Journey is not funif the process is only about the thing at the end
  • The journey IS achievement
  • Worry about being slowed down
    • Intellectually - understand something right away
    • Emotionally - it takes time to catch up
  • Never a failure if you haven't done what others expect of you
  • Vulnerability/perfection/fears of rejection
  • Let go of comparison
  • Comparison + black & white + achievement only happening at END of journey s toxic/poisonous thinking
  • Same action = different response
  • People are thinking/worrying about their own stuff (not you)
  • Difficulties when job is out of alignment with what you believe
  • Doing other things are distractions
  • Gap is getting wider
  • Trying to be nice
  • Nurture others instead of ourselves
  • Part of success is balance
  • Need for a spectrum
  • Life is like a lab - lots of experiments & failures
  • Stand on the shoulders of those who have already learned the lessons
  • Action must come
  • Ambivilence - do I/don't I? - sitting on the fence is a bad place to be
  •  

What would you be doing if I said you could not fail?

  • You may not know
  • Your fear is not nothing (it is often there for a reason and to protect you and make you think before you act)
  • Feeling the discomfort is necessary
  • Open the door for the next preference
  • Being whole yourself first
  • You have the key to everything you want - believe you deserve it
  • Do for yourself as much or more than you do for others
  • See you patterns & own your shit
  • Stay engaged in your life & the process
  • Finding out what you don't want in order to figure out what you do want
  • Positivity is great but it's also important to sit w/ your discomfort
  • That was good but I don't want to be there anymore
  • When are you ready to move forward?
  • Be kind to yourself
  • Writing as catharsis
    • F*ck you letters - start out that way but transition to here's why I'm letting go of it
  • Ask yourself the question instead of making an accusation.  Ex: instead of "I can't find any like-minded friends" say "Why am I attracting so many like-minded people into my life right now?"

 

Final Thought

  • Process instead of achievement
  • Gratitude for tonight's conversation
  • Success is not about the outcome
  • Making progress is success
  • Write letters to emotions
  • You create your own thoughts
  • I find openness really refreshing
  • Re-write your story

 

Closing quote:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worth cause;
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…"
~ The Man in the Arena, Theodore Roosevel
 

Resources

(Click on the links below)

 

 

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