How to Stop Feeling Like a Failure

There's no such thing as failure. Even though we've been conditioned to pass exams or fail exams if we get less than 70%.  I know this is so ingrained in physicians and professions where you have to take multiple exams to maintain certification or your degree.

But the truth is that even though society has conditioned us to believe we need a passing grade and there is such a thing as failure, there really isn't.  There are lessons and growth from mistakes that you believed you made.  I don't even know if there's any such thing as a mistake because whatever we happens brings us to the necessary place which often leads us to the next step.

I will tell you I am not a fan of the word. Because women always often see themselves as failures as mothers failures as wives failures as people feeling other people and maybe even failing ourselves.

I want to give you a story on my own personal failure when I believed that was a thing.

Going to an Ivy League school is very much an Indian thing or at least it was with all the Indian people I knew. Within my family and also bragging Indian parties. I went to a competitive high school where I lost all confidence gave up studying and of course gave up my spot to an Ivy League school with doing that. I got into Wash U a very respectable school but it was a big failure in my family. The word failure was thrown around throughout my 20s and really shot my believe in myself and my self-esteem.

Undergrad was rocky for me and my college counselor said I probably didn't have a chance at getting into med school. I was half ass in college about being premed and after I graduated I decided that I was going to make it happen. So I took a couple of years off to fix my MCAT and my grades and I ended up getting into three US MD schools against all odds. 

This so-called failure and misstep was what allowed me to realize that I can do anything I put my mind to.  And I'm not saying this to brag I'm saying it because I want you to know so can you.

Women can do anything. Those of us who have housed and birth babies childbirth is insanely rough.  If we can do that and nurture a little people then we can certainly do anything.

This idea that I can do anything I put my mind to, this realization I had in my 20s this was before I even knew what mindset was.  This event in my life paved the way for where I am today.

Whether people around me believed in me or not, whether or not it seemed strange, I had the guts to leave full-time medicine and launch my coaching business. There's no way I could've done this if I didn't believe that I can do anything I put my mind to.

This big move to make a career change was a result of my so called failure.

I am grateful for this failure.  Hence, I don't really believe in failure, just opportunities for growth, strength-building, and change.

Another benefit of this failure:

I now understand the value of believing in yourself. Especially in today's world when there's so many interesting careers people can choose, the climate is very different from how it was when we were children. Becoming a doctor or lawyer or engineer or accountant or going into finance aren't the only career choices.  But no matter what our children want to do, they need to believe in themselves. And my own lack of belief and where it led me initially gives me the perspective to make sure that my children won't have that this problem.

So this failure is truly enriching my experience as a parent and I can help my kids in that way.

I will give another example of perceived failure.  Sometimes when we decide to undo a commitment.  As in maybe as a young child we wanted to quit a sport but our parents wouldn't let us.  Then as adults perhaps we quit some thing that we're not supposed to quit like a marriage and then we feel like failures.  So the topic of divorce let's go there. People often feel like they fail in marriage when they get divorced.  But what if divorce and the lessons learned from a prior relationship create resilience, strength, and knowledge that a person can carry forward with them as they proceed in life.  Maybe it's the gateway to a healthier relationship and a better partner. So technically then it's not a failure. It's all about how we frame things.

Our perceived failures can be our life's teachers.

How do we change our relationship with failure?

We can shift our perspective in mindset.

We decide that we are always Learning and growing.

We are exactly where we are meant to be in any given moment even if it might feel hard.

We can decide to stop labeling our actions as failures or ourselves as failures.

This is yet another step in finding inner peace and fulfillment.

Here are some tips on making peace with the concept of failure:

We have to stop trying to be perfect-this will lower our insane standards.  I practice this a lot when there's a small mess here or there.  It doesn't necessarily have to be cleaned up right ghis moment. It's not important in the scheme of things.

Also, there is no such thing as perfection as a human being.  To err is to be human.

We are imperfect by nature and need to accept that.

By understanding the inherent err in human nature, there is automatically less to fail at!

We have to let go.

Sweating the small stuff is a waste of time. 

We can't control anything outside of ourselves.  We must relinquish our onus of anything outside of us.

In Buddhism, suffering is due to attachment. So the more we attach ourselves or attach meaning to things the more suffering we cause ourselves but if we can let go we can most certainly decrease our suffering

Acceptance

Resistance causes so much pain

We must accept what we cannot change and only change what we can (things within ourselves).

Grace

We should give ourselves grace and take it easy as hard as that may be.

So many issues we treat as do or die.  And they're often not.  Aside from death and grave illness, shit's just not that serious so we must try to lighten up.

Taking ownership of our decisions, thoughts, and actions.

We can ask ourselves why something is happening? What is this obstacle creating for me what is the consequence of this? How am I benefiting from this seemingly bad or failure ridden situation?

Gabby Bernstein has a book called The Universe Has Your Back and I never really understood what that meant but I now interpret that title as realizing that certain things in our lives, like perceived failures, occur in order to teach us something or help us grow and lead us to where we are supposed to go.

When we start shifting the way we see things we can find true inner peace and happiness.

Take it from me a recovering pessimist.  I remember in the distant past I used to describe myself as a pessimist because I wanted to be a realist. I didn't want to be delusional. I didn't want to have false hope in things that might never happen. Well, today I would describe myself as the complete opposite person. So all the labels that we have for ourselves everything that we think we are, there is wiggle room to change. We can transform completely into anyone we want to be. And if you want to learn how to shift what is going on in your brain to stop beating yourself up to stop feeling like a failure then let's talk. Thanks for tuning in and I'll talk to you next week.