Failure sucks! Pardon my honesty, but I can’t think of a single person who likes to fail. It’s painful. It’s embarrassing. It is to be avoided at all costs. Right? Well, good luck with that.

Two facts:

#1. You will fail. Failure is mandatory, not optional.

#2. There can be no success without failure. Failure is learning.

Standing Upright and Moving Forward

If you’ve ever watched children learning to walk, you know that they do a great deal of falling down! They stand, wobble, and fall. They pull themselves up, and fall again, and again, bumping their heads and skinning their knees.

Yet their enthusiasm is unwavering. They keep trying until they master the task of standing upright and moving forward.

We learn to ride a bike, ice skate, and ski by falling down. If we keep trying, most of us master these skills. So instead of calling it falling down, maybe we should call it falling up.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”  – Winston Churchill

Each time a child falls he gathers some bit of information he can use on the next attempt. He doesn’t focus on the failure; he just keeps trying. As adults, we can do the same thing.

Unfortunately by the time we reach adulthood, we have been trained to think of failure as bad and shameful. We forget what we intrinsically knew as children.

Of course, the stakes can be higher. Adult failures can involve losing jobs, money, relationships, and reputation. Still, it’s worth remembering rule #1. Failure is not optional. It happens to us all at some time. Stand up and move forward!

A Story of Failure Continue reading “Falling up. Two Facts and One Story About Failure.” →

By Thursday morning this week I found myself in a state of overwhelm. You know, that feeling of paralysis, when you don’t know what to do first. Everything feels like a priority.

The feeling of impotence had me in a major funk. I checked my calendar: manageable. I reviewed my to-do list: nothing I couldn’t handle. So, why was I stuck?

I couldn’t identify exactly what had put me there. But the truth is, how I got into this funk was not nearly as important as how I would get myself out.

Everyone finds themselves in a state of overwhelm from time to time. The stressors of daily life are real and constant. Our phones and computers constantly clamber for our attention. Our jobs demand more, faster, better. The daily news provides an ever-present stream of doom and gloom.

It’s a wonder we get anything done!

A little science:

Remember our friend the amygdala? In last week’s blog we learned about its relationship to fear. The amygdala (sometimes referred to as the primitive brain) is designed to keep us safe.

Because it receives messages milliseconds prior to the thinking brain, the amygdala can trigger emotions and put us on notice before the rational brain has a chance to kick in and analyze the situation.

In his 1996 bestselling book Emotional Intelligence, psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack”. Hijack occurs when the amygdala interprets a stimulus or experience as potentially harmful or dangerous. The amygdala’s perception that this is a fight, flight, or freeze situation hijacks our mind.

When we find ourselves stuck, seemingly unable to taking action, we are in freeze mode, not unlike a deer in the headlights. But fear not! It won’t last!

Fortunately for us, emotions are temporary. Fear, joy, anger, hurt, sadness; they all fade with time. Amygdala hijack is also temporary.

Getting unstuck Continue reading “Getting Unstuck: Four ways to overcome overwhelm” →