We fail all the time.
But what matters most is not the failure itself, but how we respond to it.
Of course it’s painful not to succeed, but by changing your paradigm about failure, you can lessen the pain and actually grow from it.
The paradigm is this: Everything is a graded test sent to you by the universe.
- Tough conversation with your partner? The universe is challenging your love and patience.
- It’s raining and you forgot your jacket? The universe is testing your ingenuity and creativity.
- Afraid to talk to that particular stranger? Maybe it’s testing your courage.
The twist is that you then rate yourself on how well you did against your Higher Self. "What would the best version of me have done in that situation?”
By looking at it this way, you get into a kind of competition with the universe that tries to show you that you can always handle whatever happens to you.
For me, this is an extremely empowering paradigm because it makes difficult situations less personal. The universe is testing your strength, and you are trying to make the best of it.
But suppose you actually feel like you've failed and it went really bad. What do you do?
The thing is that the grade is made up of two different parts. One part is how well you actually did on the test.
But the part that makes up most of the grade is how you deal with the failure internally. ”What would the best version of me do with this feeling of failure?”
Can you see the situation in a way that is helpful, that propels you forward? Maybe you learned an important lesson from it, maybe it showed you something important about yourself? And if not, can you find a silver lining?
If it's really bad, you might realize that it could have been a lot worse, and that the best thing that happened today is that you didn't die 🌈