top of page
Search

Only Ever Look Forward

devabritow

Updated: Dec 27, 2024

Over the last 15 weeks, a primary focus of this self-help journey has been staying present and appreciating the 'now', so the irony of this blog post title isn't lost on me. There is method in my madness, though, because this post is all about failure, and failure is always best left in the past.



Failure: It's Inevitable, So Get Used to It


A few weeks ago, I had what I considered to be a massive failure. I won't go into detail, but it bothered me for weeks, and in addition to the discomfort around failure in general (perceived or otherwise), I felt like it was an affront to my person (even if it was a self-inflicted affront). I think, in general, anxious people try to avoid situations where they have to answer for anything - where they're questioned - or worse yet, where they could be faced with repercussions. I know I do, so I aim to put mechanisms in place that help me avoid such situations as much as possible. In The Book Of Overthinking, Gwendoline Smith writes that, while worrying about something is useless, we can "minimise the probability" of something going wrong. She argues that:

"...behaviour changes the outcome, the worrisome thinking changes nothing. The probability of the imagined negative event occurring is reduced by action not thought".

So, the mechanisms I put in place are related to my behaviour. I agonise over getting things so right that there is little room for failure, which means little room for confrontation and a reduced risk of repercussions. In the weeks leading up to what I considered to be this 'massive failure', I'd been listening to David Duchovny's podcast Fail Better on Lemonada Media, so this notion of failure has been on the periphery of my thoughts for a while, gurgling away like a peptic ulcer and not doing me any good. I knew I would address failure in my blog at some point. I also wanted to address how I deal with failure because I clearly don't do it well.


I want to precede the remainder of this blog post with a note that I think this article would have been very different had I written it after last week's post, which was centred around Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Manson's book has profoundly impacted me since 'The Subtle Art' he speaks about is the art of being selective about what we care about. Coupled with this week's book, I'm pleased to say that I care less about failure. For the purpose of this post, though, I want to unpack it a bit, and in yet another example of how amazingly these texts tie into each other, Mark Manson offers insight into failure that hit the nail on the head for me. After using the example of babies not being deterred by falling when they learn to walk, he writes:


"Avoiding failure is something we learn at some later point in life. I'm sure a lot of it comes from our education system, which judges rigorously based on performance and punishes those who don't do well." (Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

I wasn't the best student, but I wasn't the worst either. Corporal punishment was still a thing when I was in high school, and I remember feeling fearful of punishment throughout my school career. A degree of discipline had to be adhered to at home, and being conscious of that to avoid repercussions was also a factor. I was rarely punished as a child, but I witnessed my siblings being punished, so even at home, I put avoidance mechanisms in place. I toed the line - I watched my behaviour. As adults, when my brothers and sister asked my Mum why I was spared the rod, she always said it was because I didn't deserve it. Sadly, that good behaviour was born out of fear and has stuck with me. As I work toward Breaking the Habit of being myself, I hope to let go of that learned behaviour and approach failure differently.


How To Fail


The Fail Better podcast led me to Elizabeth Day's podcast How To Fail, which is available on all major platforms and the author's website (linked above). Since I'd been listening to some other podcasts, I opted to read Day's book first, and I am so glad I did.


A self-help book and a memoir, How To Fail provides lessons on looking at failure as a means for growth and self-discovery. Drawing on podcast interviews and her personal experience, Elizabeth Day encourages readers to embrace failure as a means to transform. The book is at once funny and heartbreaking, clever and triumphant, but it is also highly relatable. The book is structured with chapters focusing on specific failures from Day's life and examining the lessons she has learned from these experiences. From dating and relationships to anger and success, she runs the gamut of the female experience (my favourite Chapter title is How to Fail at Being Gwyneth Paltrow). The author starts her book by writing about her first failure at the age of three when, to help her sick older sister, Day, brought her a hot water bottle filled with cold water. There's method in Day's madness, too, because what she wanted to drive home in her introduction was that:


"It wasn't actually a big failure, or an exceptional one but then failures don't have to be notable to be meaningful."

Day writes about having to scrabble to keep up, given she was the youngest in a highly accomplished family. I'm the third of four siblings, and while we aren't particularly competitive, I felt like I was always on the back foot. My sister, Shereen, was a very good gymnast, my older brother Raoul started surfing at the age of five, and my younger brother Devon, well, he just excelled at everything. Devon and I were at primary school together for a couple of years. One year after our swimming gala, which I did not compete in, he had four ribbons across his school shirt (three firsts and a second). I lost count of how many times he won his class merit badge during assembly. I didn't have the same physical abilities as my siblings. My parents loved the outdoors and often took us for runs on the beach (and to swim, of course). More often than not, my Mom had to stay behind with me because I couldn't keep up with my siblings. Thankfully, I loved the beach, so I enjoyed simply being there - swimming and body-surfing for hours on end. The love of the beach has remained with me since early childhood. However, the lack of physical ability plagued me and is, I think, the reason why I struggle with exercise today. In one of the many failures I could relate to in Day's book, in the Chapter How to Fail at Sport, the author writes:


"Because, just like tests and exams, failure at sport is never just about the sport in question - it almost always goes deeper than that."

I felt like I wasn't good enough. A phys ed teacher went so far as to tell me that I moved like a cricket (the insect) and always coming in last on the school track does nothing for self-confidence, so I continued to withdraw in this arena.

Day references her podcast in which she interviewed the journalist Sathnam Sanghera, who spoke about his struggles with sports at school. Sanghera says a teacher's role is to encourage students to do things, and he never had that, so he only started exercising (running in his case) as an adult. My teachers may not have, but my parents always encouraged me - my Dad mainly- but I could never get to grips with sports and exercising. Coupled with intense shyness, any group activity became a near impossibility for me. I have this memory from when I was seven years old, and I choke up thinking about it because it is so vivid, and I still remember the sense of isolation I felt. My Dad enrolled me in a ballet class at a neighbourhood school my sister attended. I remember him buying my outfit: a black leotard, pink tights, and ballet slippers. My parents had little disposable income, so this was a big deal, and I truly wanted to try ballet. On the day of the first lesson, I waited outside, and when all the other little girls streamed into the room, I stayed outside and just sat there. I never went back, and my Dad never questioned me about it. He just let me be and continued calling me his angel.


I used to have so many tummy aches as a child. My sister reminded me of this a few weeks ago. Over the years, I came to understand that stomach problems were a symptom of anxiety. I didn't know that then, of course, but I do now, and there's a degree of comfort in knowing there was a reason for all the aches. The following quote from The Mind-Gut Connection shed a lot of light on this for me:


"In the brain, spiking CRT (corticotropin releasing factor) levels raise anxiety and make people more sensitive to a range of sensations, including signals from the gut, which are experienced as severe belly pain." (Dr Emeran Mayer)

I eventually made some gains in adulthood, attending regular gym classes and hitting a 5km run once. Still, I have yet to master the staying power - the consistency to make significant changes. I consider my lack of physical exercise a failure, and it is a mountain I'd like to conquer - especially in my pursuit of the holistic body, mind and soul ideal. I also want to show that would-be 7-year-old ballerina that exercise isn't as bad as she thinks and that no one will laugh at her. If not by the 22nd of December, I hope to make some gains in this area soon. Day, who also took to running in adulthood, provided me with some inspiration in the following quote:


"There was also this innate, almost primal desire to reconnect with my physical strength. I started running because I wanted to be able to propel myself forward without relying on anyone or anything else. I wanted it to be just me and the tarmac. Having lost all my outward markers of stability, I needed to tap into my own internal power."

The extent to which I can relate to How To Fail is broad. Elizabeth Day writes about failing in her twenties, relationships, friendships, work, families and babies. My ebook is marked up considerably, but in the interest of time, I focused on exercise because I could pinpoint a link to my childhood that was both meaningful and notable. I also felt like some of the things she dealt with (not having children, for example) were something I would need to look at more deeply, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.




At the end of all his podcasts, David Duchovny reflects on his interview and shares his thoughts on what was discussed. After his talk with Rosie O'Donnell (which I loved), he mentioned that his podcast had reached a milestone of twenty episodes. He wondered if he'd gained anything over the twenty interviews. His answer reminded me that we're all on a journey:


"And I think doing this podcast was a way, in a way, to try to change myself through these discussions of failures, and I feel slightly changed. Maybe it's going to take 20 more, Maybe it's going to take 20,000 more. That seems likely, but I guess that's where I'm sitting today after 20."

When I look back at my past failures and whether or not they still carry any meaning, I realise they don't. All the same, they carried meaning back then, not because they were real failures but because I catastrophised them. I also catastrophised the 'massive failure' from a few weeks ago because it essentially amounted to nothing in the bigger scheme of things. I haven't given it much thought since reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck because the book encourages us to be more mindful of what we care about. While I care enough to adjust my behaviour to avoid a recurrence of that failure, I no longer care that I failed because I have learned something. There's no need to lament the past, so I aim to only ever look forward (maybe to 20,000 more blog posts).


 

What's Up Next Week

I have a few big books lined up but have decided to change tack a little in the last couple of weeks before the end of the year. That said, I will be readying myself for a text I am a little reticent about. The book deals with another 'F' word: faith (and religion) - contentious themes - even if the contention is internal. Next week's post will be contextual only before I launch into a book that probably holds more value because of the person who gifted it to me.


 

FOOTNOTE: Atomic Habit 8


"Worry is betting against yourself." (Terence McKenna)


I have this awful habit of immediately thinking I am at fault when something goes wrong. This is most often in a work context, and nine out of ten times (and more), I'm not. While I have a way to go yet, I felt a shift after last week's post about The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. This is not a nihilistic approach to life; it is, as I mentioned before, a selective way to decide what you care about. I care about those mechanisms I mentioned before, so I adjust my behaviour to ensure those are always in place. It's value-based since I care about how I am perceived in my work and how I conduct myself in general. I had a relatively good week thanks to Mark Manson's book, but I had a bit of a wobbly when I thought I had made a colossal mistake. I immediately switched to catastrophising to the extent that I was already formulating an apology. There was no mistake - colossal or otherwise. I placed a massive bet against myself when I immediately went into worry mode, even though I had lined everything up correctly. It was my only lousy reaction in an otherwise terrific week, and my new habit is to back myself more.


 

 
 

13 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating
bottom of page