Many talks/blog posts nowadays are about failing. It’s commonly suggested that one should embrace failure, learn the best from it, and go on. This may be one of the biggest plot holes in the history of counseling. A reader just can’t fully immerse into a general problem being put by a writer and thus can’t adopt the solution.
There’s a very, very dark essence overlooked, a bitter (not bitter-sweet in any way!) taste of failure. It may strike you that hard that you find it hard to recover at all, without learning anything from it. I literally mean anything. Some failures are just bad for you, there is nothing good in that they happened. That’s the objective reality. You may meditate and contemplate as much as you like, but the reality can be that you better got that job, better not run in an accident or similar.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s much you can learn from failure. Many failures are actually just little steps on the road to success. One day you will look back on them and not even consider them as failures. But some are not, some drag you down, and there’s nothing good about them.
It’s very important not to jump to conclusions right away and give harmful advice to people who are in failure of some kind. Don’t try to lift them up with some cliche, action-based advice. You may as well put more burden than the failure itself. Don’t make them learn from a mistake, if they are, metaphorically, lying on the floor, in their own sweat and blood. Don’t even make them stand up, a bone or two may be broken. Maybe they won’t even recover.
If you fail, put a little effort to overcome it as soon as possible. But if that dreaded feeling stays with you for another moment, don’t try to fight it, it may drain your last bits of energy. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t plan the future. Don’t bother about the cause and the solutions.
Sit.
Breathe.
Forget it. Or not.
Let it be in this moment without you trying to eliminate it.
Let it be.
It’s OK to fail.
This is your story.
Your life.
Your colours and tastes.
It’s natural.
It happens.
Let it be.
And let it pass.
Taken from Medium.