I’ve Failed!

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that I didn’t put out a blog post last Monday. Even though I promised to write a post each Monday, I missed last week. I failed. I could give excuses on why I didn’t get to post written but there’s no point to that. Basically, I got busy, and completely forgot. I remembered Tuesday, and could have put it out a day late, but I decided not to.

The reason I chose not to put the post out a day late, was so that I could write this post. You see, it doesn’t matter who you are, or how long you’ve been practicing, there will be times when you just fail to do what you’ve set out to accomplish.

As I often tell my students, failure isn’t an option, it’s a requirement.

There are going to be those times when you simply fail to do what you planned, expected, or said you would do. It happens. The failure isn’t important. What you do after you fail is. Most people after they fail at something, no matter what it is, just give up. “Well, I tried that, it didn’t work, so I’m done.”

That is defeatist thinking. It’s how 99.999% of people live their lives. That’s an extremely low bar, which means that if you fail, then pick yourself up and try again, you’re doing better than 99.999% of the population. It doesn’t matter what you failed to do, or how, as long as you continue to attempt it, you at least have a chance to attain what you want.

You may think that failing to put out a single blog post is nothing, but I promised to do it every week. As a Witch, I take my promises seriously. My word is my bond. So, to break my word to you, even unintentionally, is a serious thing to me.

My first instinct last Tuesday, when I realized I’d missed my deadline, was to immediately put something out. I decided instead, to let it go, and use this week’s post to talk about failure, because it’s something we all face.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

We’ve all heard that axiom. Most people think it’s silly, or down right stupid. The thing is, it’s correct. No one is going to master something on the first try. In fact, most people are going to fail in some way, if not completely, on their first try. That’s how we learn. Failure teaches us what not to do! If you simply give up, you never take the chance to put that lesson into practice.

Think of the most successful person you know of. I can guarantee that whoever it is, they failed before they made it big. Bill Gates? He failed to complete college, so did Mark Zuckerberg. They both dropped out.

There’s a famous story about Thomas Edison trying 5000 different materials for the filament of his light bulb, before it worked. The story goes that a reporter asked him how he felt when he failed 5000 times. His reply was that he never failed, he simply found 5000 ways not to make a light bulb.

Today, there is evidence that Edison may have actually stolen ideas from others who were working on the same problem. Knowing what I do about him, and how he mistreated Nickola Tesla, I can believe that. Even so, the fact is, he didn’t give up if an idea didn’t work the first time. Mainly because, it usually didn’t.

The fact is, you are going to fail. I’m going to fail. Everyone is going to fail. It’s inevitable. Knowing that, makes it much easier and less painful to recover afterward. People make an emotional investment into the things they want to succeed at. It’s human nature. Teenage boys pin their entire self-worth on asking a particular girl out. If she says yes, they feel invincible. If she says no, they are emotionally devastated.

Even though these boys have absolutely no control over what the answer will be, they don’t see the rejection as a no to the date, they see it as a rejection of them. Fortunately, the drive to pair up is strong enough to overcome the feeling of rejection, and they try again, with another girl. Eventually, most learn not to put an emotional investment into the proposition, until after they get a yes.

You put an emotional investment into everything you decide to try. When you fail, it devastates you. Just like the boys learning how to ask a girl out. You’ve failed. Now the question is, what are you going to do about it? I’m not saying to stop emotionally investing in your ideas. I’m saying that if you are going to invest emotionally, stop giving up at the first sign of failure.

Make your emotional investment worth something.

If you’re going to invest anyway, you might as well make that emotional investment pay off. Yes, it hurts when you fail at something you’ve invested in emotionally. It doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship, a marriage, an idea, or a form of Spirituality. If you’re married, chances are, it wasn’t your first relationship. That means you’ve failed in at least one relationship before.

We tend to forget our failures once we succeed. We all have enough successes, to have forgotten many failures. Since success is celebrated, and failure is forgotten, when we do fail, it tends to feel awkward. That’s ok. Getting outside your Comfort Zone is part of growth. Do something uncomfortable enough times, and it becomes comfortable. Remember the first time you were put behind the wheel of a car, on a busy street?

It really comes down to priorities. How important something is to you, how high up on your list of priorities it is, will determine how likely you are to continue after a failure. If it’s something you really want, a failure isn’t likely to derail you for long. You will continue working for something you really want, no matter the obstacles.

It’s the things that seem nice, but aren’t really a priority, that you’re likely to give up after a single small failure. A few weeks ago, I posted about figuring out what you really want out of life. If you read it, and came up with something, but you’re ready to give up on it after a single failure, it isn’t really what you want.

That’s also a valuable lesson. Fail quickly, so that you can find out how important something really is to you. If it’s not so important, that you’ll easily give up after a failure, then look again, for something more important to you, instead of wasting time on something less than you really want.

That goes for everything you do. I have never been married, and I’m not currently in a relationship. My friends tell me that I’m too picky. No, I just know what I want. I know what’s important to me, and I’m willing to fail at all other relationships, until I find that perfect one. I’ve come very close to the perfect relationship several times, I know the perfect woman for me, is out there somewhere. I just haven’t met her yet. I’ve come extremely close. I spent ten years with a woman who was perfect in every way, the problem was we never met face to face. She lived half way across the country. We talked for hours every day on the phone, with Skype, and by text. We made plans to meet many, many times, but something always prevented our meeting.

One time we planned to spend Samhain together in New Orleans. We had planned everything about the trip, where we were going to go, what we were going to do. Then hurricane Katrina hit. Every time we planned to meet, something prevented it. I didn’t give up. She was important to me. It took me ten years of not being able to touch her, for me to finally decide that for whatever reason, we just weren’t meant to be together. Being with her was important to me.

The world, or the Gods, just wouldn’t allow it.

Sometimes, no matter how much work you put into a dream, it just doesn’t work out. When that happens, it truly is devastating. It took me several years to get over her loss. Eventually, I came to realize that if she was out there, and I had found her, there had to be someone else, equally perfect for me. Preferably close enough to touch.

My point is, when you are trying to achieve something truly important to you, and you continue to fail at getting it, don’t give up on it, either fix the failure, or think about what’s causing the failure to happen, and change it so that it can no longer fail. I gave up the perfect woman I loved, so that I could find a perfect woman I can love, and spend the rest of my life with.

I’m still looking. I haven’t given up. If something is truly important to you, you won’t give up either. There is no owner’s manual to a happy and fulfilling life. It’s all trial and error. You learn from each and every mistake and failure. They teach you what not to do. It’s not the easy way to learn, but as a Witch, you chose not to take the easy Path. Sometimes the choices you have to make, will devastate you.

Whether you realized it or not, your choice to become a Witch, means that you are going to take the Path less traveled. The well-traveled Path is easy. Many people take it all the time, turning a Path into a trail, which turns into a road, and even a highway. You may find that your Path requires you to use a machete.

That’s why it’s the less traveled Path. No one else is willing to do the work it takes to travel along it. You may have noticed that ‘doing the work’ is a reoccurring theme. I can wax metaphorically about using a machete to hack vines blocking your Path, but in reality, the things that encroach on, or block your Path, are things only you must deal with.

The thing is, that highway everyone else is taking, leads to what everyone else wants, and tells you that you should want. Your Path leads to what you specifically want. The reward is worth far more than the trouble, once you reach it.

No one can walk your Path for you.

No one, not even I, can tell you what Path to walk, or where it will take you. It is your Path, to walk alone. That doesn’t mean you won’t find others on similar Paths. You may even walk along side them for a time, but each Path is individual, and can only be walked alone. No one else wants the same exact things from life that you do.

You are both your own greatest ally, and fiercest enemy. The trials you face are all of your own making, not someone else’s. The point is to find ways over, around or through the obstacles that block you from getting whatever it is you truly desire. You are going to fail. Not once, but many times. It is not the failures that determine where you go, but how you face them.

What do you think? If I’m wrong, point it out to me. If I’m right, tell me what your obstacles are, and how you plan to face them.