How Do You Spell Success?

How Do You Spell Success?

By now you know how much I enjoy playing with language, with the meanings of words, and what we do with them. Things got a lot easier for me when I recognized that patience and tolerance were some serious shortcomings for me in certain situations. I put up with way too much nonsense. It got me started thinking about other words that make my life harder.

“Chores” was one such word. I had a lot of baggage attached to that word. Chores were meted out as punishment sometimes, or paying jobs. It was confusing, and I grew to hate them. As I grew up, I changed the word to “blessings” and it transformed the way I felt about those tasks. I would much rather bless my little house than do chores.

“Failure” was another word like that. It kind of went hand in hand with “mistakes.” I felt wrong as a person, and used those two words to beat myself up. I took mistakes and failures as indications that I was somehow less than everyone else. I saw failures as indications that I wasn’t good enough, and that I could never measure up to some mysterious standard.

Why am I a winner? What makes me successful? How am I accomplished?

By changing my beliefs about what failure meant, I released a lot of icky stuff. I didn’t get there all at once, I kind of chipped away at it. I saw myself as a failure, a loser, I felt like a mistake. I needed to separate myself from that personalization. I had to practice noticing that I made mistakes, it wasn’t something I was. I had failures. And life isn’t a race, so feeling like a loser usually meant that I felt like I didn’t meet an arbitrary standard I had imposed on me.

I often fail at stuff. I try something new, and get it wrong. Instead of going to hopeless, I choose to learn. I get curious. Curiosity is a powerful tool in our cache of resources. I can ask questions like, “What did I miss? How can I better understand this? Do I need a new skill? Does this just need more practice?”

Failure then turns into an opportunity, or several opportunities. I get to have compassion for me. I get to experiment, and be creative. I get to add information to my list of what doesn’t work for me. I can choose to feel optimistic about what I will try next. I get to decide if whatever I am trying to do is worth it to me, so I practice deciding and choosing for myself. That empowers me.

Because I am creating a new relationship with the word, I am also giving myself permission to try new things, to have new experiences, to meet new people. When I felt like a failure, I avoided letting people get to know me. I didn’t want them to see past the facade I put up. I didn’t want them to see that I was a phony fake. I wasn’t sure what I was being phony about, but I sure had the feeling. Parties were torture. Any kind of social gathering was fine, if I was working as a hostess, or server, but to just be a guest? I would find a place to sit, and try to go invisible.

How do I connect? What makes me engage? Why am I interested in you?

By letting go of feeling like a failure, I had more energy for intimacy. Because I was developing my curiosity, I got curious about you. I wanted to know you better, and I wanted to let you know me better. I was able to let down my shield of impenetrability and feel vulnerable. It got easier to trust.

Now, I will often review my successes at the end of a day. Sometimes they are big, like making a big decision that can change my life. Sometimes they are tiny, like choosing to leave the treat in the freezer, or vacuuming the stairs. I count ‘em all.

How have I changed from being a miserable failure to reveling in my success?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07182014