Struggling With the Feeling of Failure, 10,000 Times Along the Way
If you’re anything like me, then you were utterly gobsmacked by the astounding images that NASA released recently. They are “the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken,” according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson. The odds we’d even get to see those images was amazing: there were 344 possible points of failure along the way, NASA said.
Another number of the same sort comes from Walter Mosley: “Failure is the heart of all art. We fail 10,000 times more than we succeed. We fail again and again and again. One of the great things about starting to write, for me, at the age of 34, was that I was already a failure in life.”
Mosley is a bestselling author of over 30 novels, starting with “Devil in a Blue Dress.” I quoted him in another post, about increasing one’s creativity. And I would submit that he only was able to achieve what he did because of his understanding that screwing up, over and over again, is just part of the process.
That wisdom can pertain to any of us striving to do hard things, no matter what they are. It certainly is helpful to me as I tackle a brand new draft of my sequel to “The Juice,” a dystopian sci-fi novel.
THE FAILURE ATTITUDE
Aside from the tough odds, there’s another aspect to setting hard goals that are so striking to me: how someone reacts to the divebombs into a personal hell.
That was on my mind watching the men’s finals at Wimbledon. The mere idea I’m mentioning Wimbledon is kind of astounding. When God made me, he forgot to implant the sports computer chip in my brain. But watching that match was a study in emotions, and looking at it on that level, I was transfixed.
If you watched, then I won’t need to tell you what I mean. It would have been hard to miss the difference between how Nick Kyrgios played and the ultimate winner, Novak Djokovic. As I learned from my friend Ellie, who had turned on the game telecast, Kyrgios is known for his hot temper. He really got into it with an umpire during the match over his bad reactions to a heckler. “She looks like she’s had 700 drinks, bro!” Kyrgios yelled.
DJOKOVIK’S FALURES & FOCUS
Granted, Kyrgios is an amazing athlete. He’s gone far despite the tantrums. Maybe it’s a stress reliever to blow off steam, and he can’t handle it any other way. Seen from a remove, it was almost entertaining.
On the other side of the court, Djokovic’s attitude is worth emulating: he still registered disappointments along the way, but he showed a calm hyper-focus on winning with every stroke in that battle.
“Failure isn’t bad if it doesn’t attack the heart,” said Grantland Rice, a sportswriter in the first half of the 20th century. That’s all well and good to say. But how do we make sure that our hearts aren’t attacked, regardless of what we’re trying to achieve?
TACKLING FAILURE GRACEFULLY
One answer came to me while listening to the Meditative Story podcast, featuring Sharon Salzberg, a bestselling author who teaches Buddhist meditation practices. She has named the inner pessimistic voice in her head Lucy, after the character in the “Peanuts” cartoon. One of the Lucy quotes she loves is: “You know what your problem is, Charlie Brown? The problem with you is that you’re you.”
When Salzberg realizes that she’s getting frustrated by herself, she talks to that Lucy in her head by saying, “Hi Lucy. Just chill out.” She explained during the podcast that in pointing a finger at her bad attitude and calling Lucy, she is acknowledging something: “I know that my awareness is stronger than she is.” That helps Salzberg regain the right mental equilibrium to meditate deeply or do whatever else she’s striving to accomplish.
What am I going to call my version of Lucy? Since one of my cats has that name, I need a different one. Finding it just might launch me into a better headspace as I lift off into my own sci-fi worlds — which cannot possibly be more astounding than those NASA photos.
With my own personal bad-attitude name, maybe I’ll be more calmly realistic as I hobble and lurch down the road toward my goals.
