If you are feeling like a failure today…
In case of interest to folks feeling this: (if not, please disregard and awesome!)
If you happen to be feeling like a failure today, then for starters, please feel most free to join the club that includes the rest of us. You’re so not alone. And…
I wanted to share: A moment from working with a dear friend & client today:
Strong personal opinion alert. Please disregard or adapt if you don’t resonate with what I’m saying here, ok!?
Use this moment to full advantage. It’s no fun at all feeling like a failure. And yet, we all have to endure it time and time again. In small ways every single day, and in big ways sometimes. And, the interesting thing in there, from my point of view, is: feeling like a failure is a FEELING.
And more to the point — every feeling is a body sensation. The sensation is the thing telling us we’re a failure. Same as other body sensations tell us that we are sad, or happy, or joyful, or angry, or free.
Reverse engineer the situation. Thoughts and situations can make us feel like a failure, true, but I would say it’s more often the other way around. A body state tells us how to interpret otherwise quite neutral or easily changeable situations. Take your power back.
To use this moment to your full advantage, for your work, your relationships and for your happiness…. I’d say: see if you can find what spots in your body seem to be related to the ‘experience’ of failure. Find em. (They will probably be tensions, but other sensations are valid, like emptiness, coldness, heat.) And get to know (a body snapshot of) the physical sensation of failure as best you possibly can. So much so, that if you ever feel ‘failure’ again, you will be able to check in with your body and see if it’s showing up in the same places. ie. Become an observational scientist about what the physical sensations of failure are.
My bet is, you will find those places, you will begin to transform them by observation alone within minutes, or days. Tame failure. The only thing it can’t stand is being looked at physically and squarely in the eyes. It’s just a body state. Not a mental one. And it begins to melt when you can find it.
Big hug & hope this helps,
Alex Baisley
