If you are reading this, you must have made a mistake in your life and if you are living in this world you must have read or heard of inspirational quotes like ‘Learn from your mistakes’ and ‘Don’t be afraid of making mistakes’.
But, have you ever thought why despite it being so easy, it is so difficult to learn from our mistakes? We keep folding layers of mistakes upon the layers.
Just like you, I was curious too. I started reading books, articles and watching videos to know the answer. In this expedition, I learnt a fact which is beyond making mistakes. The fact itself is an obvious mistake in our daily routine that we have never tried to rectify it.
Before knowing the fact, I want to share my personal story of failure. In Pakistan, an academic year of the schools is divided in three terms. Each term lasts for three months and there is an end-term examination at the end of each term. There are three exams in a year and the last exam decides your next destiny- whether you will be promoted or you will repeat the same class for another year. I was a smart kid in kindergarten, grade one and grade two. I had never failed in any examination until grade three. In grade three or year three, I failed in the first end-term examination and that was my first failure that I remember in my life.
On the report distribution day, with my report card in my hand, I was feeling a sensation of fear chasing the sensation of shy throughout my body. Instead of thinking of ‘why I failed,’ and ‘how can I improve it for the next exam’; I was thinking ‘how am I going to share it with the family’ and ‘what will be their reaction’. On the way back to home, I was feeling anxious and heavy with negative feelings of agitation, embarrassment and anger.
When I arrived at home, I was silent. My mother understood something is wrong. We had lunch. No one asked anything and I didn’t share about my failure either. I kept the news inside where the feelings of fear and embarrassment were suppressed. As usual, during the dinner, my father asked about my result. With a shaking body I took sometime to swallow the food inside my baby mouth. Every one was silent and munching. I finally told my father and the rest of family members that I had failed the exam.
Soon after breaking the news, I was showered with anger and criticism. Everyone stopped eating dinner as if I had failed the exam of my life and death. After a short while, eventually, everyone started eating again and the situation became calmer. When the dinner was finished, my parents advised me on not wasting my time and taking my studies serious.
Afterwards, I started studying seriously not because I developed more interest towards my lessons but because of the feelings of fear and embarrassment that I had carried after my first failure. To my surprise, it resulted in my second failure in the second end-term examination and consistently I continued failing for the first and second end-term examinations and, with a lot of effort and some cheating, I would pass the final exam to move to the next class each year until grade eight.
I became famous as a serial failure among my relatives and classmates.
That few minutes during the dinner after my first failure had huge negative impact on my life.
Now you might be thinking if on that night my parents would give their supportive advice first and then their criticism or they would only give their advice but not their criticism, I would not fail as many times as I actually did.
If you are thinking that way, you are wrong just like I was. Why? That is our mistake that I learnt. Keep reading.
The only main reason behind my continuous failure was not the anger and criticism of my family- however, it did have its impact but not as much as we think- rather it was because no one asked me about my feelings: how do I feel. Everyone ignored my feelings of fear, embarrassment and anger. They all started expressing their reactions.
During the journey I understood that denying bad feelings intensifies them; acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.
Similarly, I was not given the opportunity to share my bad feelings and neither other acknowledged them. The feelings of fear, embarrassment, hesitation, and anger always remained deep down in my gut. It gradually killed my courage to face those feelings and learn from my mistakes to avoid further failure.
Comparably, except failure, in our daily life we come across numerous reasons that we feel negative emotions because of our actions or because of others’ actions or words. We keep intensifying those negative emotions because we are taught that negative emotion means something has gone wrong.
Until we are willing to approach our negative emotions, or others’ who come to us to share with us, with acceptance, compassion and especially willingness to feel them, we cannot mold the clay of our life into anything different than what it is now. There will be no change. Our emotions will remain negative in the same way as a sculpture’s clay will remain cold and rock until he accepts the reality and softens the rock and then turn it to a beautiful art.
Now, if you make a mistake or if you fail in your life, never try to avoid the bad feelings, instead embrace them positively. None of the feelings is good or bad, it is us, our society and our culture who make the feeling good or bad.
What is your failure story? Share in the comment box below.