AMANI ALIGN

After you put yourself down after failing at something, did you magically wake up the next day excelling at it? When you told yourself “I didn’t go to the gym today, I’m so lazy”, did you start going to the gym regularly? When your parents/guardians yelled at you after failing a test, did you all of a sudden excel at the following tests?

It is natural to feel shame, pain and regret after you “failed” to meet certain expectations. Feelings of doom and sorrow often follow and you’re left to deal with the consequences of your perceived failures.

Nowadays, you can’t even escape the reminders of your personal failings because anytime you turn on your phone, you are faced with hundreds if not thousands of content of people seemingly doing better than you. Even though you know that social media does not represent reality, sometimes you can’t help but feel inadequate.

The shame you feel from your past failures can haunt you the more you dwell on them. Think of failure as a little monster that lives in your head. The more you feed it, the bigger it grows. The next time you fail at something and you tell yourself “See I AM a failure! I can’t even do this right!”, you will subconsciously develop a limiting mindset that will do anything to confirm your beliefs (that you’re a failure). This will create a vicious cycle of failure, then shame, and then failure again. This is why the self-talk you engage in, is determinant of whether you will change or repeat the cycle.

It took me a long time to understand why positive thinking and self-compassion are major themes in overcoming failure. It is because shame does not work! Not only does shame not work, shame can become part of your core beliefs which will prevent you from envisioning a reality where you overcome these challenges and succeed. If you feed shame enough, shame will grow larger and larger and eventually consume you until all your self-confidence is dismantled, and you no longer know who you are.

Self-compassion is being gentle with yourself in recognizing that you know who you are and failures don’t define you. Self-compassion reminds you that you are a whole person who’s not defined by what you offer the world. YOU define who you are. Self-esteem is recognizing that even though you failed today, that does not mean you have to fail tomorrow.

This is NOT to be confused with taking no accountability. Taking responsibility for your actions and telling yourself “I did this,” can be empowering because it means you have the ability to undo this and change your actions moving forward.

The harsh truth is that you will fail again (because we’re human) at some point, and society is going to give you more than enough shame to last a lifetime. Do you really want to shame yourself even more? Isn’t life hard enough? Do YOU need to be an enemy to yourself? You can’t control other people’s perception of you, but you don’t have to reinforce those negative emotions.

The truth is, I wrote this article for myself because I keep reminiscing over things I did wrong, things I failed to do and doubting myself over and over again. I wrote this as a reminder that no matter how much I beat myself up, it’s not going to change anything unless I change. In order to change I need motivation. I can’t be motivated if I feel like a failure because that makes me feel hopeless. I motivate myself by acknowledging my failures, taking responsibility for my actions, and assuring myself that I am capable of change.

If there’s anything you takeaway from this, I hope that you take this moment to be kind to yourself. The world is so cruel and puts enough pressure on us to be perfect as it is. You don’t have to do that to yourself. You can be the source of positivity and seek refuge in the comfort in solitude knowing that it’s a safe place. The only way to create that safe place is loving yourself unconditionally, flaws and all, leaving no room for shame to manifest.