One perspective that really screws with people is failure.
The idea of failure comes from choosing to believe someone else’s opinion of your situation.
You can’t fail at being yourself! You can only produce results!
I made some no bake brownies the other day. Chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter, maple and brown sugar oatmeal, snickers and peanut M&Ms. Sounds pretty good right? Nope. They actually kind of sucked. To much salt and peanut butter. Some people would see my brownie as a waste of money, a failure. Not me. They were a lesson. I learned to use less peanut and more chocolate. If the next ones aren’t awesome, I’ll use more sugar.
Edison went through hundreds of lessons to learn what not to do to make a light bulb. I used to look at my relationships as failures. Now I learn from them. It’s important to grasp this concept fully. It’s destructive to view yourself as a failure. It can become a cycle that continues to grow and destroy, like a tornado or hurricane.
I would intentionally do things to prove to myself I wasn’t a failure. But, life never goes as planned. When what I was doing didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I considered myself a failure. I had to try something larger to compensate for the last screw up. When that didn’t work I was a larger failure. They cycle continued building in size and the damage got more serious.
This destructive thought of failure eventually led me feeling extremely hopeless. I gave up on everyone and everything except the drugs that numbed the pain. Homeless, neglecting my kids, worrying my mom, stealing (even from people close to me), not caring about the consequences.
My tornado of failure started to do some heavy damage when I found out I was going to be a dad. I never had a chance. I was a failure from the gate. I had a piss poor job that wasn’t worth the gate to get to. An opiate habit that was getting out of control. The more I felt like a failure, the more I used. The more I used, the higher the failure I became.
The damage came in many forms. One of the biggest for me was losing my ex. Using opiates, I was oblivious to reality. I know she wasn’t happy with me. I had no clue she had given up on us long before. I never saw it coming when she broke up with me. I said fuck life and gave up.
I don’t try to fail anymore. I stopped judging myself. I no longer view on the outcome with a warped perspective. I view it exactly for what it is. A result to learn from. I try, and I learn, what does and does not work. By learning I build confidence and self-esteem. I start living up to my potential.