Embrace failure

I’ve thought a long time about whether to post this- it’s been written for some time waiting to go out into the world, but it’s definitely a vulnerable edge for me. I had a client call a couple of weeks ago, we were working with failure. I shared my experience with her and realized it might be time to let this out into the world.

I hate to fail. There, I said it. Failing feels icky, it feels heavy and just not good. I’ve had a conflicted relationship with failure for a long time. I understand the value in it now, but I really hated the feeling of failing. The thing that I’ve learned though is that failure can hide magic, it’s where the best lessons are found.

I have a conflicted relationship with failure. I was raised in a household of type A+++ achievers where failure was not necessarily embraced as a means for learning, it was simply a failure. As a child I’m pretty sure I identified with that, meaning if I failed I was a failure. My parents who were wonderful but tough didn’t enforce that sentiment, but they didn’t exactly not enforce it either. They were more yellers when things went wrong. The child version of me hated to fail because I likely thought I was a failure and I wanted to avoid being yelled at.

2 things happened as a result of this: I didn’t try a lot of things that had a high likelihood of failure and I worked my ass off to make sure I didn’t fail. This was my MO for a long time, definitely through my 20’s. Fortunately I was pretty good at my pre-coaching CPG marketing career, I worked hard but it came naturally to me so while I stretched to the edge of my comfort zone, I was often still in my zone.

A move precipitated a career shift and the opportunity to try something totally different. Because of where we lived a similar role was less of an option (this was pre-wfh). I had young kids and wanted to be both a mom and a professional. Having flexibility and autonomy was a must so I made the decision to re-imagine a career where I could have both.

I started executive recruiting, did well, but found it frustrating on many levels. It provided excellent insights into the humanity of business as well as a pathway to coaching.

The seeds of coaching were planted when I was at Coca-Cola and the time felt right to make the leap. Here’s the rub, I wasn’t immediately, naturally the most fabulous coach ever. As with most new things you have to be willing to be bad before you’re good and the question for me was, was I willing to lean into this discomfort, to willingly fail and wade through the icky feelings to get to the other side?

I had a coach ask me this very question and I really had to think about it. I looked at the life other successful coaches had; freedom, flexibility and impact, but I really had to consider whether it was worth it to willingly feel that icky feeling I hated, to practice, fail, learn and improve to get what I wanted. The thing that helped push me was the question would I look back and regret not doing it? The answer was yes, so I took a deep breath, braced to feel uncomfortable and jumped in.

It has not always been an easy journey and along the way I’ve occasionally questioned my decision, but looking back it’s definitely been worth it. I had to learn to be with my own discomfort, to not only face, but embrace my fear of failure. I learned and grew more from leaning into my edge, being uncomfortable than I ever would be staying in my comfort zone. I have NO regrets about facing my fear of failure, I wish I’d done it sooner.