Rethinking success and failure - without the shame

What’s your most painful failure - in any aspect of life?

Because in order to be ‘successful’, we need to ‘fail’.

Some of my most painful ‘failures’ are my multiple miscarriages. Even the word ‘mis-carry’ implies a ‘mis’take on the person’s part.* Each time I felt like a complete failure.

This thing (that some people would have us believe is the only reason women exist), I wasn’t able to do. BUT...this is the thing about ‘failures’...that’s just a label for something that does/doesn’t happen and we judge that the outcome is either ‘success’ or ‘failure’.

And so many emotions become attached to those words. I’m not suggesting that changing the word would stop the pain of this sort of loss, or the disappointment of not getting an outcome we want, but perhaps we wouldn’t layer the level of self-shame on top.

And whilst some kind people were quick to tell me that I wasn’t a ‘failure’ for the miscarriages, it didn’t change how I felt. We’ve all heard the advice of ‘learn the lessons from your failures’. And I believe that this very label of 'failure' can actually prevent us learning...because in that word is such shame.

The shame of the outcome can lead us to actually bury this experience or try to forget it and move on past it completely - and then the learning doesn’t take place.

Changing the word won’t change the outcomes, but, instead of focusing on the OUTCOME and turning that into the label and the focus (e.g. failure), we could look at the PROCESS and use another label instead.

For example, how much more interesting and useful would it be to label them ‘attempts’? I think we would then be more prepared to learn from them - and we’d learn more quickly - as there would not be the same emotions attached.

I now no longer really feel a failure for these losses, and I have learnt a great deal from this part of my life (subject for another day). Pain and disappointment remain, but I don’t torture myself with the ‘failure’ and shame associated with it.

So, I’d invite you to consider something that still feels like a painful ‘failure’, and really think about what more you might learn if you thought about these attempts in those terms.

As Thomas A. Edison said: "I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that did not work” What do you want to really be successful at? Contact me for help in getting there, without the shame.

[*9 - 15th October is Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness week]