“Failure is the new awesome,” my yoga teacher said in his deep booming voice as we eased back into child’s pose after a hearty, vigorous vinyasa series. This is interesting, I thought as I breathed into the space between my nose and my mat. I wonder where he’s going with this?
“We’re afraid to fail. Some people say the opposite of success is failure. I beg to differ. Winston Churchill said, ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ When you fail it means you’re awesome. It means you took a risk, you stuck you’re neck out.”
He then asked us to move into downward dog he added, “And if you want to stay in child’s pose for a while that’s OK too. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means you’re listening to your body.” I propped my hips up but remained resting on the ground as the salted cashews and piece of salami I’d snacked on earlier this morning had suddenly conspired to form an angry ball in my stomach. (Hey, it was organic cashews and nitrate-free salami so don’t toss my halo in the trash yet…)
I don’t like failing. I don’t like embarrassing myself. I don’t like exposing myself as being less than perfect. But I’ve failed many times and came out on the other side as the winner. I’ve quit jobs, friends, relationships, classes, school programs, and hobbies and they all ended up being the catalysts for change and success that I couldn’t have envisioned being possible if I’d continued to cling to what wasn’t serving me anymore.
In taekwondo I have fallen flat on my back, been kicked in the head, endured countless injuries, and had to try things over and over and over for months or years at a time before I got my mind and body to click and do it right. In my last post I mentioned that I quit ballet and my college dance major, which set off a domino effect that landed me in the awesome life I have today. I’ve learned just as much, perhaps even more, from my “failures” than I have from my successes.
Later in the class we were balancing on one leg in warrior III/airplane (funny, there’s no Sanskrit term for “airplane pose”) with our upper body, raised leg, and arms stretched out behind us. He instructed us to lean, lean, leeeeeaaaan forward…and then dive into standing split. “You see?” he said. “You thought you might fail if you fell forward. But you ended up going exactly where you needed to go.” Sly, this yoga teacher of mine.
We did it again on the other side, and this time I was braver. I tipped my upper body straight towards the floor like a seesaw, stretched my arms and raised leg as high as I could toward the ceiling, dove my face as far down towards the mat as I could, all the while snickering and hearing my taekwondo instructor’s voice inside my head shouting, “Why don’t you do that during spin kick?? I always have to remind you to lean your shoulder back!!” If I fell, who cared? I was going to catch myself and land in the next pose anyway. I was going exactly where I wanted to go.
Are you afraid to fail? Are you afraid to even try because you’re afraid to fail? You might fail. You might fall on your face, embarrass yourself, and totally screw up your life. And you might not. Either way, the final outcome is in your hands. You have the power to learn from your failures and use them as catalysts for success. Dive in! You’re awesome either way.
(Funny side note: earlier today I was wearing a Nike t-shirt that says, “Behold Awesome.” I guess we’re all on the Awesome Train today)
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