I’ve failed loads of times in my life, but I learnt early on that I didn’t like the feeling of it so I stopped doing some of the things I wasn’t very good at. I stopped drawing or being artistic. I stopped anything active/sporty.
Interestingly, I just had to stop myself writing that I don’t have an artistic bone in my body – I’ve no real idea whether I do or not because I’ve not tried in over 30 years. I always tell people I can’t even draw stick men. I realise now that I probably could if I tried. Maybe I could even be decent, good or amazing if I tried. But I’ve convinced myself that I’m utterly terrible so what’s the point?
This is what can happen when we fail at things because we’re taught that failing is bad. That if we fail at things, it’s because we’re not good enough to do them. That we have certain skills that we can access, but the others are out of reach, or too difficult to access.
In actual fact, that’s not true at all. We could try absolutely anything we wanted to! And yes, some things will come to us more easily than others. I find it easy to try things online or with computers because I’m more comfortable with how they work than some other people. I’m also more used to showing people how to do things or fix them so that comes more easily to me.
What we also need to remember is that all the things that we can do now, are all things we’ve learned how to do. I wasn’t born knowing how to use Google to find the best solutions to problems – Google didn’t exist until I was 22! I also wasn’t born knowing how to deal with computer issues. I didn’t even take any computer subjects at school.
We all learn things as we go through life and sometimes we pick them up easily but sometimes we have to push a bit more to work out how to do things better. Just because we failed once, doesn’t mean that we can never do that thing. Imagine if parents gave up the first time they did something they felt was failing. No-one would have any parents around!
I’ve had to learn how to accept failure and not run from it and hide myself away. If I kept doing that, my life would be small and boring. Instead, I’ve flung open the doors that kept me safe and invited in the lessons I need to learn.
The big one right now is how to engage with the people I want to work with. I recently created a workshop that didn’t get anyone signed up to it. It might be that I didn’t give people enough notice, or maybe it wasn’t something that people were interested in. Maybe it was, but they were confused about what I was offering. Marketing is not my strong point but I’m trying to learn.
I would really love some feedback from the people who like what I have to say so over this week, up until Friday 27 May, I have a prize draw and each piece of feedback I receive (you can give more than one if you want to) will be entered into the draw where you could win 4 free coaching sessions on a subject of your choice. This isn’t restricted in any way to what I would usually coach so let your imagination run free.
I have a questionnaire that you could fill in (don’t worry, it’s short!), you can comment on this blog, send me an email, text me, send me a message on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Whatever you prefer. Just let me know if you’re enjoying my content, would prefer something different, anything workshop-related or just to say hi. I can’t wait to hear from you 💖
Questionnaire can be found here - https://forms.gle/j7AUnF7s1PE5eNEE8