Every event has a purpose and every setback has its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of the personal, professional, or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards.
Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.
Robin S. Sharma
In the last few weeks, we have talked about how time and age do not have to limit us at all! Another story many of us like to find comfort in is, “Once a failure, always a failure.” Let’s unpack this story today and begin to flush it out of our belief system.
If you have ever tried and failed at something in the past, it can become easy to assume that our past failures mean that we will fail again in the future. We accept those past outcomes are guarantees or blueprints for future outcomes. That we are destined to fail at whatever we attempt.
We might be tempted to think, “I always fail at this so why should this time be any different? I am just a failure, a screwup.”
Our limiting story is that our past failure means future failure. We assume that our past fully governs our future. That if something didn’t work in previous attempts, it won’t work in the future.
True story: In the old days, as junior high school approached, we needed to choose academic or general tracts for the rest of our education. I have known what I wanted to do with my life for a long time but had no role model. The academic track required taking a language. I signed up for the academic track but had to get an additional signature from my mother. Apparently, somewhere back in the second grade, I had performed poorly on a standardized test that indicated that I was not up to the challenge of learning a foreign language. This did not make any sense to me, so I petitioned my mother, who acquiesced, signed the papers for me, and the rest, as they say, is history. How different life would have been we/ I had accepted that previous failure as a true indication of my capabilities going forward. This is not to say it has all been easy. But we get to make important choices over and over that can change the course of our lives. And those choices should be based on truth and fact, and not some historical misstep.
Now let’s rewrite this limiting belief into empowering beliefs.
Old Story:
- “Past failure means future failure.”
New Empowering Story:
- “My past failures have no bearing on my future.”
- “Past failures help me avoid future mistakes.”
- “I’ve simply discovered a way that doesn’t work.”
- “Each failure brings me one step closer to success.”
The simple truth is that your past failures do not have any bearing on your current endeavors. Just because we have failed in the past does not mean that we will fail in the future.
Let that marinate a bit…
Chat next week
[…] will continue to build on last week’s post, where we talked about letting the past rule our present and future choices. I shared a story about […]