I FEEL LKE A FAILURE


“I feel like a failure!” my good friend told me a few days ago. It was a painful thing to hear and I could see that she spoke the truth. She looked as if she didn’t feel well. There were dark circles under her eyes. I knew that she had a lot of stress with work and family. The tears in her eyes conveyed what she had been keeping bottled up. She was tired and hopeless. I protested and gave her the list of positives that I know are true about her. But I knew she wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t accept them. She was hurt and not willing to open herself to anything positive.

I’ve know this woman for almost 30 years now, and one thing I know for sure is that she is not a failure…at least in my definition. But I have been realizing how much our thoughts affect us, in particular when we come to a place where we feel like failures. In our culture Failure=Loser. There is no getting around that. That is what others think and that is what we think. We do the judging silently, but that is what we come up with. In the last year or so we have been living with the daily evidence of failure, both on our news reports and closer to home in real life.

What is Really Lost in When We Feel Like Failures?

I wanted to examine more closely what is really lost when we feel like failures. Here's my list.

Confidence – Self confidence is the thought energy that is required to “keep going” or to “try again”. When we feel like a failure we begin to focus all of our energy inward, nursing our wounds. We no longer are looking outward or ahead.

Creative Energy – The energy that we have connected with a new idea is almost immeasurable! When we are focused on our sadness and hurt we put a lid on this kind of energy. We put a lid on ourselves and we become inactive, both mentally and physically.

Hope – Hope in itself is important but accomplishes nothing without action. When we lose hope, we lose the spark that would normally lead us to action. We begin to have thoughts that are hopeless and we let them cycle in our thoughts so that nothing else can enter.

Healthy Connection to Others - The only thing we want to talk about is how bad we feel. So others become a sounding board only. We don’t want to listen to what they say, especially if it is something positive or something hopeful. It’s like being sick and not wanting to take the medicine that will make us well. We soon “run off” those who would be our best supporters because their efforts don’t seem to be what we need or want

Opportunity – New doors open to those who are looking ahead and are hopeful. When we are “feeling like failures” the doors may be standing open, but we don’t look or we tell ourselves that those doors are for someone else. We hang on to our hurt sometimes so that we won’t be “hurt again”!

Momentum – Action stops when we begin to look inside ourselves to find out “What happened?” This is one of the most important things we lose when “feeling like a failure” shuts us down. This is like Physics 101! It takes a lot more energy to restart something that has completely shut down, than to take something that is already in motion forward. This applies to human beings as well. We may not always know the whys, the whens, or the hows. Trust is what fuels us to keep on going until we have new understanding about the “failures” we have experienced. When we lose momentum, our ability to trust ourselves and others, and even God has been damaged or set aside.

Good Feelings – Remember what it was like as a kid to be free on that first day of summer? No more school…at least for three months. Good feelings propel us forward through many a hard time. When we feel like failures we lose that sense of aliveness. We can create that for ourselves by regularly doing things that we know “make us feel good”. This may seem too simple an idea. But I encourage you to try it if you are feeling like a failure. Feeling good about yourself is the first step back on the path and may lead you to the sense of personal success that you have been looking for!

Good Health – When we feel like failures we don’t do healthy things with our bodies. We eat unhealthy foods and we become inactive. We become “couch potatoes”. And then our bodies produce the chemicals that reinforce our negative feelings. Treating your body with healthy food and going for a walk outside are simple things that can bring you back from the damaging thoughts of failure. I know you feel tired. I have been there. Take a 15 minute walk outside and then let me know what happens. Good health doesn’t have to cost anything. You don’t have to go the gym to get it!

We wear Failure like a dark, heavy robe. We drag this robe along with us as if we have no choice about it. It hides us from others. We think we would not want others to know that we are failures! We think we must deserve this failure because we are stupid! So we keep wearing the robe, this tear soaked, heavy, uncomfortable robe! If it were a robe we could choose to take it off! We could keep on walking and leave it behind. We could let it stand there on its own, stiff and dark! It might be that simple to deal with FAILURE!

We could leave it behind, and walk in the light, UNBURDENED!