Is it possible to deal with this feeling instead of pushing it under the rug?
A paradox. Few nouns would define my friend Paulo so well. Even the decades of camaraderie, since adolescence, have not allowed me to understand the reasons for his projecting him as someone who was flawed in everything he did. This despite evidence to the contrary: talented illustrator, book author, awarded at Anima Mundi, International Animation Festival. And, what he meant most to me: a close friend and a good conversationalist.
But that’s not how it looked. He thought there was always a dark cloud over his head, saying that nothing he tried stood a chance of success. It could be a job you weren’t chosen for, the desert in love lifethe continuous defeats in the race against the boletos…
Paulo had one trait common to many who cultivate this self-image: he blamed congenital bad luck and quoted a line by bluesman Albert King, which goes “If it wasn’t for bad luck / You know I’d have no luck” (“If it wasn’t if it were for bad luck / You know I wouldn’t have had any luck”). He was convinced that he was a puppet of destiny drawn by a metaphysical force contrary to him.
fault collectorSt
So he just stopped trying. He stopped having business contacts, he no longer saw friends (I was an exception, even though our appointments had become leap years) … In love, then, he became celibate. After all, who would get involved with a “failure collector” like him?
I talk about my late friend in the past because he died in 2020, from the consequences of a serious heart attack. Too soon, she was still 40 years old. In a way, I felt like I let him down too. I’ve never been able to help him get rid of this fixation that he was “born to lose.” If it were really possible.
Not that it was an easy task. According to the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, these negative feelings about oneself take over the personality. “Allowing yourself to be swept away by failure creates an enormous sense of ‘I.’ kind of addicted to sinking into self-pity and guilt and shame.”
fail better
This American nun, who has a collection of her thoughts on the subject in the book To fail. Fail again. Fail better (Global Editora), teaches us that, obviously, in many moments of life we will not be able to achieve our goals. but that we should reflect on these failures as a natural part of existence. And this will pass.
Practice accepting the undesirable
Pema Chödrön reveals that, to get back on our feet after a fiasco, we must practice embracing the undesirable. In this way we keep in our hearts what she calls the “rawness of vulnerability”. One of the synonyms of “vulnerable” is precisely “defeated”. Accepting any failure, or even a string of failures in a more difficult period of life, will make us, as Pema explains, “fail better.”
And this means having the psychological conditions to face that feeling instead of hiding it under the carpet or, worse, internalizing it as inseparable from our essence. While this vulnerability is stark, it is easier to combine it with all other aspects of our personality, including those that fill us with pride, without it overpowering us.
overcome failure
And one of the best ways to live with failure is to try to understand the reasons why something went wrong. Because believe me, he’s not a god who doesn’t like you or a case of chronic bad luck. If a job has not materialized, it is possible that your professional history has not been the most favorable for that vacancy. And it may well be that there is still a chance reverse this situation. If you really want this job, you can look for better preparation, invest in courses that will give you the skills the employer wants…
Love can end. alright then
And a relationship ended? First of all, it’s worth reflecting: was this finale really a failure? An exercise in self-knowledge goes a long way in redefining what happened. If the separation was natural consequence from a life together where there was no more romance, intimacy and mutual admiration, taking new paths tends to be more of a success than a mistake. Failure would mean pushing a relationship permeated by indifference with your belly.
And herein lies one of the great opportunities to rethink the conventional perspective of bankruptcy. For our grandparents, a divorce in the family was a sin, a weakness (perhaps of both parties involved). It was deviating from the standard society expected of you. A scheme that kept unhappy couples out of comfort. Listening more to your inner voice can be a reunion with the possibility of being loved – by a person without eyes dulled by disenchantment or the wear and tear of living together.
More ways to show love
Idealizing the other less or what to expect in a relationship also changes our perspective of failure. Does your partner not know how to nail a painting to the wall? How about focusing on how good he is at cooking or taking care of the kids? Does your partner not verbalize how he feels about you? Like marriage counselor Gary Chapman, author of the bestseller The 5 languages of lovewords of affirmation aren’t the only way someone can show affection.
This can happen through physical touches during the day (a caress or a spontaneous hug), dedicating quality time to yourself (such as turning off your cell phone in a restaurant to fully concentrate on the appointment), with gifts (different from the price, but due to the symbolism they have) and for acts of service (the person who offers you a massage, who takes care of the plants you bought, who prepares a romantic dinner without the date necessarily being special).
Learn to re-mean failure
That is, understand the roots of what you consider a failure is also an opportunity to give it new meaning. Or use that feeling to build something new and positive. “Sometimes you can take vulnerability and turn it into creative poetry, writing, dance, music… Artists have been doing this since the beginning of time,” teaches nun Pema Chödrön.
An artist who has shaped his creative universe around the idea of failure is Allan Sieber. Designer who already had a fixed space at Folha de São Paulo and today he is a regular contributor to the magazine PiauìSieber has an art called A cat called failure. The drawn cat, with a sad expression, says he has seven lives, but they are all bad.
Another destination for failures
Today, Allan Sieber’s biggest source of income is a newsletter called My dear Diary, in which he tells, without any filter, the small and big defeats of his everyday life. It could be when your apartment was flooded, annoying neighbors, or problems with a payment you were due to receive. Everything is a theme for your work.
“Writing about failure has become a therapy for me. I live in Rio de Janeiro, but my best friends are in the South or in São Paulo. So, having no one to talk to, I came up with the thing of complaining about life in this diary. And that helps me… quite psychologically,” she says.
According to him, the fact that since childhood, having faced many situations that didn’t go as expected, has accustomed him to expecting the worst and knowing how to deal with it. “I’ve become a more stoic person. It has to be a very serious tragedy to bring me down.”
What is Bankruptcy?
Yet, the designer questions people’s notion of failure. “I don’t believe, for example, in this capitalist view that having failed to accumulate money and goods is a failure,” he says.
Allan knows that you don’t have to be rich to remove the stigma of failure from your soul. “I have regular bills, I’m a single father, but I always see my son, I live from my art, which is very rare in Brazil… So, in a sense, I also consider myself a winner.”
life will go on
Failure is the raw material of Allan Sieber’s art, but it doesn’t define it. Our setbacks will alternate with conquests and periods in which little good or very bad happens. Assuming that no one is this always glorious fake image we see on people’s Instagram is one way of doing it improve self-perception. So we develop a more balanced perspective on our capabilities and also on what won’t work anyway. And life will go on anyway. Maybe even better than before.
by Alex Martins
It fails when the situation calls for manual skills, such as changing the shower head. But she doesn’t feel that her world is falling apart because of it.
Published by Vida Simples magazine
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
