Can you imagine such a thing as embracing failure? That’s what I’ve been asking myself for a week or so, a challenge from a coaching course I’m taking. It’s one thing to “accept” failure, but “embrace”? So I’m looking at the difference between accepting and embracing failure.
To ACCEPT allows allow me to admit where I am, in the pit of whatever failure I perceive. From the bottom, the lowest low of failure, I can choose to move on and, with grace, move up.
EMBRACE? Embrace invites me to LOVE failure, a seemingly impossible task. I’m working on it. I don’t really know what that looks like and for all my failures, I don’t think I’ve loved any of them. Yet I’m beginning to see that there is a gift in embracing failure. If I can love my own failure, I experience a compassionate heart. This allows me to open to all of who I am, including what I have most hated.
From this place of love and compassion, I experience empathy for others, their losses, their perceived failures. If I can hold the space for myself and others to truly experience and embrace their failure, instead of falling victim to failure, running away, covering it up, rationalizing or excusing, I allow the space for the compassionate heart to emerge.
Cate
Thank you for your beautiful look at embracing failure. It gives me hope that I can embrace it too.
Blessings
Bette
You are my inspiration, Bette!
I just read your blog on failure from last fall. Embrace failure. I can hardly accept it. Failure brings up shame, inferiority, disease–even death. Fear of other people seeing my failing self, leads me to hide, lie, and cheat. Then I recall my experience of failure with you Cate. It led me into a bountiful space of opportunity, adventure, new eyes and ears. For today, I will open myself to the gifts of failure. Welcome it in. Hello my old friend.Stay around so I can get to know you and love you. Marisa