Failure Doesn't Have to Own you
Wield it and you'll be invincible
đ Friends!
Dropping the latest episode on Failure for those who missed the livestream plus read on for another perspective on failure from a younger me that might have been sorta on to something.
đ§ Hereâs what Exactly to do When You Feel Like a Failed Marketer
You Failed
I wrote about failure about 10 years ago when I working like a benny addict to build my career. Itâs filled with the self-indulgence and a drama of a 30 year-old (and token Paul Jarvis reference). If nothing else, itâs a bit of levity on a subject we ought to be less serious about. Hope you enjoy 𼸠- Devin
âHell man I know very well you didnât come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except youâve got to stick to it with the energy of a Benny addict.â - Kerouac
The thing that no one tells you about failure, the goddamn drag of it that no one ever talks about at cocktail parties or on the jacket of their best seller, or in their hopeful, Go get âem tiger! speeches. The thing that knocks you down on your bloody knees and peels back that layer of skin, the tender one thatâs never seen the light of day, never been strung out, never known what itâs like to be exposed. That goddamn virgin pierce.
Itâs The Thing that scares people so much that they can only talk around it â though they still encourage it (failure, that is) â and brag about how âIâve failed once and it was the greatest lesson of my lifeâ or âI wouldnât be who I am [insert wildly successful subtext] if I hadnât failedâ â and then just for egotistical shits and goddamn giggles â âmultiple times in my life.â
Yeah. Those clowns, these eternal optimists, those goddamn failure followers, you know what they donât tell you?
Failure F*cking Sucks
It takes away your hope. It makes you feel like youâve never made a right decision ever in your life and worse: you never will again.
Failure makes you feel like what you want isnât possible.
It sits at the edge of your bed every morning and laughs in your face. It reminds you â reminds you â that youâre no good and never will be good at anything. It leaps around in your stomach, it bangs on your temples and taunts your tender heart:
âYouuuuuuuu. Youâre doing all the wrong things!â
Then it wakes you up in the middle of the night, like the goddamn asshole it is, and says to you":
âYou donât even know what the right thing is.â
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Youâre doing it wrong
And you want to know the WORST thing about Failure?
Itâs right! By the time youâre failing, you are on the wrong track and you are definitely doing the wrong things.
In fact, you veered off the path ages ago, only you donât realize it. Now youâre flying your airplane in the middle of two storms with no place to go. You could have just stayed and waited the storms out, but no, you didnât and now all you can do is fly and pray for air. Only there isnât any air, because itâs all being sucked up by the storms you decided to fly into. So you take off knowing youâre going to crash, but youâre too focused on flying to see that itâs a mistake, that there was another way â thereâs always another way â you just didnât see it.
So you fly into the goddamn mess like an asshole, and everyone is screaming at you to turn around, but you canât hear them above your failing engine. All you can hear is that goddamn voice: âJust keep going, you can do it!â and so you do, but its a big mistake, because guess what? Youâre going to fail.
You fail
Didnât catch that? Let me try again: You fail.
You fail. You failed. You failed.
And you want to know the absolute worst thing about all of it?
Itâs a good thing.
You goddamn have to fail.
Why?
Why??
WHY???
Because:
Failing sets you on the right track
You donât know it yet, but Failure is doing you a giant solid in the worst possible way. Because by the time Failure gets called in, you are past the point of nudging, of suggesting, of âYou might considerâŚâ
Yeah, The Universe tried that already and you didnât listen. So guess what?
Failure has to step in, because you persevered beyond the point of reason.
Failure is screaming all the things you didnât listen to before. Itâs picking a fight. Itâs brawling. Itâs smashing that bottle over your head because you just couldnât, you just wouldnâtâŚstop.
Just. Stop.
But you canât stop. You think you canât, that is. So you fight back at failure and keep going like the goddamn sucker that you are, which only makes it worse you lollipop sucking fool.
And the more you fail, the harder you try! You in your goddamn justified justifiableness. YOU JUST KEEP TRYING BECAUSE YOU DONâT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.
Only thereâs nothing to do - not a goddamn thing besidesâŚ
Fail.
Just fail.
Why?
Why??
WHY??!?
Because the truth is - probably the truest thing of all:
You didnât actually fail
You were on the wrong track. You were done with whatever you were doing and couldnât see it. Or, more likely, it wasnât you at all, it was just life - a series of circumstances brought about when you mash a bunch of humans together on one planet, all with their own agendas, beliefs, behaviors.
Maybe if you really thought about it, you werenât happy in that job or the structure of your life wasnât serving you (aka making you happy). Thatâs how come failing doesnât make you a failure.
Failure is a choice, not a circumstance.Â
If you dust yourself off, learn from it and try again, someday youâll look back and remember the time when you did that thing that didnât work, but it led you to the thing that did.
As Paul Jarvis says, âFailure may be demoralizing, but itâs not that important.â
And thatâs when youâll realize that all those failure preaching optimists in those books, they might actually be right.
â¤ď¸ Love you bunches,
Devin & Margaret