You Are Not A Failure

This story is for people who are struggling with the feeling of being a failure.

You know the feeling. That heavy sensation on your shoulders you feel when nothing you try seems to be working. When everything you do seems to make things worse, not better. Soon, you feel unable to act at all because there isn’t a point. Why try, when everything you try is going to make things worse?

Fear no more, because I bring you good news: You are not a failure.

I know you are not a failure because there is no such thing as “a failure.” There are no people who are “failures”, no people who cannot even claim one success to their name. There are no people out there who are irredeemable. If your emotions have convinced you of this, then they are wrong.

The sense of shame that comes with failing begins as a healthy experience. It encourages us to look at our failures and ask ourselves how we can avoid that kind of failure again in the future. But because we evolved such that our emotions are much more powerful than our rational thoughts, we often go overboard. We keep beating ourselves up about our failures, long after we learned the lesson we were supposed to learn.

It’s good to process your failures and understand how to avoid a mistake like that again in the future. It is not good, however, to dwell on your failures and use them as ammunition to put yourself down. When you do that, you’re no better than a bully, even if the person you’re bullying is yourself.

Cut yourself a break. Instead of telling yourself a story about how you are a failure, acknowledge the reality of the situation:

1. You are not “a failure,” you are just a person who failed
2. Everyone fails sometimes
3. Everyone also succeeds sometimes
4. You have succeeded sometimes as well
5. Ergo, you are not “a failure.” You are a person who fails sometimes and a person who succeeds sometimes…. Just like everyone else.

You are not a failure. All you are is human.

The feeling of being “a failure” often separates us from the people around us. But far from separating you, it unites you. Everyone you meet, from your grocery store clerk to your boss, struggles with failure just like you. We all have failures we look back on with shame, and we all have successes we look on with pride (or, more commonly, successes for which we do not give ourselves enough credit). Open up to people close to you about this feeling, and I guarantee, they will have stories about failures of their own.

Feeling like a failure is a natural human experience. No matter how objectively successful or unsuccessful someone is, we all feel inadequate when we compare ourselves to someone doing better than us and we come up short. It has very little to do with the objective “truth” of whether or not you failed and very much to do with our survival instinct driving us to compare ourselves to others within our tribe.

That’s why the feeling of failure is universal to the human experience. Everyone, from a destitute drug addict to Jeff Bezos, has felt the shame of being a failure from time to time.

Furthermore, feeling like a failure is not a referendum on your worth as a person. The feeling of shame that comes with being a failure is no more indicative of your worth as a person than the feeling of pleasure that comes from experiencing success. Just as the successful are not more valuable, the unsuccessful are not less valuable.

It’s easy to understand this is true when we’re talking about a third party, like the downtrodden poor, but harder to apply to ourselves. We Americans are not very inclined to give ourselves a break. But you will never be at peace until you learn, because you will always be beating yourself up for nothing more than being human.

The key to escaping these suffocating feelings of shame and disappointment is to tell yourself a different story. When you feel that sense of shame about your failures envelop you, instead of telling yourself the same old story about how “I’m a failure” and “I can’t seem to do anything right”, tell yourself a new story:

• “I am doing the best I can, and I can be proud of that.”
• “Everyone goes through periods of failure in their life.”
• “I am strong for persevering through this difficult time in my life.”
• “The only person who fails is the person who gives up.”

You don’t have to use these exact phrases. If something else speaks to your heart, make up your own. What’s important is changing your self-image. Instead of seeing yourself as a failure and as someone who can’t do anything right, see yourself as someone who’s just pre-successful. See yourself as someone who’s best days still lie ahead, as long as you keep going.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

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