Winners and losers, this is how we’ve divided up the world. There is no grey area, no participation ribbons to be given out for good efforts (as much as we like to pretend that there are). We shower our winners with glory and quickly forget about those that strived but did not succeed. We are taught to idolize winners and to model ourselves after them, but what happens when we ourselves strive and falter? What happens when we attempt to reach for greatness but aren’t quite able to grasp it? Shame, embarrassment, disappointment, regret? Are these really the lessons we should be taking away from our failures?
It’s now only days away from the end of the month and the end of my ‘10 books 1 month‘ reading challenge. I am sitting in my living room, book open, hastily scrambling to get through book number 7 while still attempting to retain some of the story. In the back of my mind I can’t help but become distracted by how far behind in my challenge I currently am, and as much as I’m enjoying my current novel I find I am progressively enjoying reading less and less.
This is not because of reading itself mind you, but because of how stressed it has made me in attempting to accomplish the scale of reading I’ve (perhaps foolishly) committed myself to. I now struggle with the reality that this might be the first challenge that I am unable to finish.
This is not for a lack of effort; in fact I’m quite proud of how much I have invested into what I’ve accomplished so far. Unfortunately life for one reason or another, has just gotten in the way and even by making my best effort to balance work, my social commitments and bit of summer down time with hours upon hours of reading, the reality is that I’m going to fall short of my goal.
Don’t judge me
It’s funny how our brains work in situations like these. Rather than thinking about how much I have accomplished, my mind fixates on the lack there of. I worry about what this failure will mean to the people following me that I’ve worked so hard to try and inspire. Will they judge me or be disappointed that I could not achieve my goals? I think it’s this problem that is most dangerous as it’s this feeling of fear that holds so many of us back from attempting our goals in the first place.
“I’ll never win so what’s the point.” This is the mentality of so many people (even myself upon occasion) and why I’ve come to realize we need to fail a lot more often in our lives. It’s only through failure that we become truly vulnerable and we can realize that there isn’t a scary judgement awaiting us upon our miss steps. We realize that we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to try.
What is more important, the strive for perfection or the pursuit in something greater?
We often idolize perfection as the end all and be all of achievement but we rarely remember just how unattainable perfection truly is. We get so caught up in striving for this unattainable goal that we forget the true purpose of striving in the first place: The pursuit in yourself of something greater.
What was my purpose?
I sit staring down the barrel of failure and I try and think about what my months goal really was in the first place. I wanted to read 10 books to force myself to read more often and to lose myself in the process of reading. Have I achieved that goal? I believe so. So then do I really have anything to be ashamed of? Maybe the problem isn’t my failure but rather my perception of success.
It’s interesting that this month has not only become my greatest challenge but also my greatest lesson in humility. Reflecting now, I realize that it’s only because of my ego that I feel these negative and self-conscious emotions. If I can just learn to put my ego aside and allow myself to enjoy my achievements rather than focus on the numbers then maybe this can become more of a success then any challenge I’ve taken on so far. After all there’s nothing to say that I can’t read my remaining books into the next month.
I think the goal in life should be to set unachievable goals, for it’s only then that we will really push ourselves to the limits of what we’re capable of. This process forces us to practice failure and therefore concur it, to learn to appreciate our wins and ignore our egos demand for perfection. The more often we fail reaching for something great, the closer we will become to achieving greatness and enjoying the journey to get there.
