Failure is one of the biggest things I’ve feared most.

Failure has meant embarrassment, shame, proof that I wasn’t good enough, and potential ostracism, so I avoided it.

In my twenties, I bought a magnet with the printed quote, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” which was attributed to Unknown.

This quote seemed like it contained the antidote to my avoidance of situations where I could fail. And for a long time, it felt true. I should go forward boldly and take action as if I couldn’t fail.

It made sense until it didn’t.

The magnet still lives on my fridge, but I now see failure differently. I no longer believe we should take action with the assumption we won’t fail. It isn’t true.

We fail in small and big ways all of the time. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t know how to walk, ride a bike, cook, or drive a car. To learn a new skill, we must fail, adjust, and try again.

The problem isn’t in the failure. The problem is the judgment of the failure, the lack of safety to fail. That’s what I didn’t understand for so long.

I now see it’s ok to fail. In fact, it’s good to fail because it means we tried. But we can’t stop with trying — we have to take it a step further. We have to see clearly what went wrong before we make another attempt.

If we’re stuck in the shame and embarrassment of failure, we’ll stop trying and give up. I’ve spent a lot of time in that stuck place, where I judged myself too harshly and expected to be quicker at learning.

But that pressure to be perfect out of the gate only led me to give up too soon or to not try in the first place.

Years ago, when I took a rock-climbing class with the Colorado Mountain Club, I remember observing my peers and noticing how they struggled but kept trying without an ounce of shame or embarrassment after their failed attempts at getting up the rock.

I didn’t understand their lack of shame because my self-worth was so tied up in being good right away.

Now, as a parent, I don’t want to pass on my fear of failure to my son. So, we regularly talk about things that haven’t gone as well as my son would have liked. Instead of seeing these situations as failures, we talk about what he would do differently if he could have a do-over. We talk about what he’s learning.

I’m trying to talk to myself similarly when I fail. What can I do differently? What am I learning? The big question I’m asking myself is “What will I attempt to do even though I will likely fail?”

—

Joanna Zaremba is a writer, yoga teacher, and movement and mindset coach. She helps her clients to trust themselves and their bodies. Joanna has lived in the Pikes Peak Region since 2011 and can be reached at joannazaremba@gmail.com.

Failure is one of the biggest things I’ve feared most.

Failure has meant embarrassment, shame, proof that I wasn’t good enough, and potential ostracism, so I avoided it.

In my twenties, I bought a magnet with the printed quote, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” which was attributed to Unknown.

This quote seemed like it contained the antidote to my avoidance of situations where I could fail. And for a long time, it felt true. I should go forward boldly and take action as if I couldn’t fail.

It made sense until it didn’t.

The magnet still lives on my fridge, but I now see failure differently. I no longer believe we should take action with the assumption we won’t fail. It isn’t true.

We fail in small and big ways all of the time. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t know how to walk, ride a bike, cook, or drive a car. To learn a new skill, we must fail, adjust, and try again.

The problem isn’t in the failure. The problem is the judgment of the failure, the lack of safety to fail. That’s what I didn’t understand for so long.

I now see it’s ok to fail. In fact, it’s good to fail because it means we tried. But we can’t stop with trying — we have to take it a step further. We have to see clearly what went wrong before we make another attempt.

If we’re stuck in the shame and embarrassment of failure, we’ll stop trying and give up. I’ve spent a lot of time in that stuck place, where I judged myself too harshly and expected to be quicker at learning.

But that pressure to be perfect out of the gate only led me to give up too soon or to not try in the first place.

Years ago, when I took a rock-climbing class with the Colorado Mountain Club, I remember observing my peers and noticing how they struggled but kept trying without an ounce of shame or embarrassment after their failed attempts at getting up the rock.

I didn’t understand their lack of shame because my self-worth was so tied up in being good right away.

Now, as a parent, I don’t want to pass on my fear of failure to my son. So, we regularly talk about things that haven’t gone as well as my son would have liked. Instead of seeing these situations as failures, we talk about what he would do differently if he could have a do-over. We talk about what he’s learning.

I’m trying to talk to myself similarly when I fail. What can I do differently? What am I learning? The big question I’m asking myself is “What will I attempt to do even though I will likely fail?”

—

Joanna Zaremba is a writer, yoga teacher, and movement and mindset coach. She helps her clients to trust themselves and their bodies. Joanna has lived in the Pikes Peak Region since 2011 and can be reached at joannazaremba@gmail.com.