“They say it is not the failure itself that inhibits you from moving forward to achieve what you have aspired to achieve but the fear of failure itself.”

In our life, we experience so many small setbacks- failing in a class, breaking up with a boyfriend, losing a friend or even failing to meet the expectations of your loved one. These moments feel so significant at the time and soon enough you begin to create a disappointment in yourself. You feel what is happening to you is merely a consequence of your carelessness, insensitivity or lack of competence. You begin to draw conclusions, you begin considering yourself ‘a failure’. But what is success or failure really? Is it  a bunch of preconceived notions that the society makes you believe as a right or wrong way to approach a certain situation, to achieve a result that is approved by people?

Most often in our lives, we blame ourselves for those little setbacks that we consider massive failures, without reflecting on what shaped our ideas about failure or success in the first place.

The notion of success is simple, look a certain way, earn a significant income, have a certain sexual preference, have healthy relationships, conform to the rules of the society and do everything as it ‘should be done’ But who defines the better way of how you look, who puts a number on what a good income is, who decides whether the right sexual preference is being heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or asexual, who dictates what  ‘should be done’.

And what if you fail all the above mentioned things? What if you are too pale or too dark? Or you are in debt and feel a certain way romantically? Is your life not good enough? Are you simply a failure in life?

The society has inflicted on us set notions that are based out of stuck-up perspectives and assumptions.

What if we choose to function out of these labels? What if we could create a healthy relationship with failure and thereafter create a relationship with ourselves? 

The first step to do this is to create an awareness of what makes you feel accomplished or disappointed in yourself? This is not a formal evaluation but an introspection. 

Remember when you were about to go to the stage, and this is the moment you had been waiting for, you felt this unexplained tightness in your chest, your feat did not wish to take another step. You felt like you could not be in the spotlight. What is this feeling? The evaluation does not involve judging your feelings, but rather understanding them.

In a world where everyone’s pacing to reach their dreams, one gives little time to reflect on their feelings and emotions and hardly any to understand what their relationship with success or failure is.

Identify if there is any similarity in situations you feel failure in. Are there any preconceived notions or beliefs underlying the sense of failure. Where and when did you create these ideas about success and failure. Would you choose to destroy them?

With a renewed sense of what success and failure stand for and with a new relationship with them you can now take the risks that you have always wanted to take. Steal the spotlight, make the high jump, pursue the one you have felt was way out of your league. Because if you fail- it is just a notion. 

Anne Sweeney has said, “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.”

If you do feel a sense of failure ask yourself what you could create from it? What if you could create so much more and so much bigger than you ever expected, if you were only willing to choose?

What if you could fail to fail once, twice and every single time. Start working on your relationship with failure, because that is what it is, it is a relationship. At times, you might not understand why you feel the way you feel. At some instances, you might believe that it is not working out and feel that you are drifting towards your old ideas of success and failure. The key is to keep working on the relationship so it is a positive one. 

A healthy relationship with failure builds character. You have a harmonious existence with something that people dread. You are present with the possibility of not doing something the way that the world believes it should be done. And that does not influence you. Your ideas about things in  life are going to continue to evolve. The way you choose to respond to situations depends on you. The questions here is what do you choose to do today that will enable you to be at ease with your present and create so much positivity in the future. Are you willing to create a relationship with it and what is it that you are doing to make it healthy and contribute so much to your life.