If at that place is i skill that is not stressed very much, but is really needed, it is knowing how to fail. There is a Samuel Beckett quote that goes "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." That quote is what will help y'all more anything else in the side by side twelvemonth, the side by side ten years, the side by side twenty years, for every bit long as you live, until you lot drop expressionless.

In that location is a lot of accent on succeeding. We all want to succeed, especially if nosotros consider success to be things working out the fashion we want them to. Failing is what nosotros don't usually become a lot of preparation for.

And then how to neglect?

Nosotros usually recollect of failure every bit something that happens to us from the exterior: Nosotros tin can't get in a good relationship or nosotros are in a relationship that ends painfully; we tin can't become a job or nosotros are fired from the job we take; or any number of ways in which things are not how we want them to be.

There are ordinarily 2 ways that we deal with that. The first is that we blame it on some other—our boss, our partner, whoever. The 2nd is that we feel really bad about ourselves and label ourselves a failure.

This is what we need a lot of help with: this feeling that at that place is something fundamentally wrong with us, that we are the failure considering of the relationship or the job or whatsoever information technology is that didn't piece of work out—botched opportunities, doing something that flops, heartbreak of all kinds.

One of the ways to help yourself is to brainstorm to question what is actually happening when at that place is a failure.

Related: Being Natural

Someone gave me a quote from Ulysses where James Joyce writes about how failure can lead to discovery. He really doesn't use the give-and-take failure; he uses errors, which he says can be "the portals of discovery."

It can exist hard to tell what's a failure and what's but something that is shifting your life in a different direction. In other words, failure can exist the portal to creativity, to learning something new, to having a fresh perspective.

I will use me as an example. The worst time in my life was when I felt similar the greatest failure, and this had to do with a 2d failed marriage. I had never experienced such vulnerability and pain than during that particular groundless, rug-pulled-out experience. And I actually felt bad almost myself.

It took me three years to make the transition from wanting to go back to the solid ground of what I had known earlier to having the willingness to become forward into a brand-new life. Simply when I did, it resulted in a profound sense of well-beingness. It resulted in me becoming a acknowledged author!

Related: Making Friends With Oneself

Sometimes you feel failed expectations as heartbreak and disappointment, and sometimes y'all experience rage. But at that time, instead of doing the habitual thing of labeling yourself a "failure" or a "loser" or thinking there is something wrong with you, you could become curious about what is going on. Just remember that you never know where something will lead.

Getting curious about outer circumstances and how they are impacting y'all, noticing what words come out and what your internal discussion is—this is the key.

If there is a lot of "I am bad. I am terrible," but notice that and soften upward a bit. Instead say, "What am I feeling hither? Maybe what is happening is not that I am failure—possibly I am merely pain."

This is what human being beings have felt since the beginning of time. If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to become curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don't buy the ones that arraign it on everybody else, and don't buy the storylines that blame it on yourself, either.

This is the affair: I have been in this space of feeling like a failure a lot of times, and I used to be similar anybody else when I was in it. I'd just close down, and there was no awareness or curiosity or anything.

Out of that infinite of failure can come addictions of all kinds—addictions because we exercise not want to feel it, considering nosotros want to escape, because we want to numb ourselves. Out of that infinite can come assailment, striking out, violence. Out of that space can come a lot of ugly things.

I carried a lot of habitual reactivity of trying to get out of that space. Then every bit years went by (and meditation had a big office to play in this), I began to become to the place where I really did become curious in that space you can call declining—the kind of raw, visceral feeling of having blown information technology or failed or gotten something wrong or hurt someone'south feelings.

And and then I can tell you that it is out of this same space that come our best human qualities of bravery, kindness, and the ability to really accomplish out to and intendance near each other. It's where real communication with other people starts to happen, because it's a very unguarded, broad-open infinite in which you can go beyond the blame and just experience the bleedingness of information technology, the raw-meat quality of it.

It's from that space that our best part of ourselves comes out. It'due south in that space—when we aren't masking ourselves or trying to make circumstances go away—that our best qualities begin to shine.

♦

Adjusted from Pema Chödrön's commencement address to the 2022 graduating class of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The full speech communication is published by Sounds True in Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.

[This story was first published in 2015]

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