Failure Isn’t Failure Until We Give Up

By in Mastershift

Failure is an illusion we’ve convinced ourselves is reality, and we’ll have to be willing to fail a few times before we achieve any kind of success. Failure isn’t meant to stop us from doing the things we fail at – it’s meant to help us realize and overcome our shortcomings so we can learn, grow and refine our creativity.

When we feel like we’ve failed at something, the first thing we usually want to do is give up. The impulse is there to just stop; to quit doing the things we have so much trouble with, but we can’t give in to that impulse if we want to hone our craft.

We can’t let that impulse stop us, and little do we know, the success we seek is right on the other side of our failures. In most cases, a closed and rigid mind is what causes us to greet failure with the impulse to give up, and we might want to call on love and spirit if we want the strength not to quit.

These qualities, along with faith, determination and the willingness to stick with what we’re doing no matter what, will enhance our strength and make our creativity easier, more enjoyable and more uplifting for the people it’s meant to help.

Creativity is an interesting thing, because it’s so personal, and yet, it’s something we use to uplift others. There are plenty of people who don’t share their creativity with the world because it’s too personal, but most of us who do share it have met creative failure at one time or another and it can be disappointing and nerve wracking.

The reason it can be so nerve wracking (for me at least) is because of the fear of failure or embarrassment. Fear is as much of an illusion as failure, but they’re both convincing illusions that we’ll have to call on our inner love and wholeness to diminish.

I think fear ultimately drives failure, because failure wouldn’t exist if nobody gave up on anything. In my eyes, failure only becomes real the moment it causes us to give up. If we keep going and hone our craft to where we want it, we’ll never fail because we’ll never stop.

“A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.” – Elbert Hubbard (1)

When we do let a setback influence us to the point that we just quit, failure becomes so real that it can easily influence us in other areas of life. Well, I failed at one thing, we might tell ourselves. Looks like I’m about to fail at this too…

Credit: Verybestquotes.com

The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems that failure’s a false quality that we sustain by convincing ourselves its real. We never truly fail until we give up, and as long as we stay diligent and consistent, even in the face of the worst or most impossible odds, we’ll never fail. Not even once.

Doesn’t that sound liberating? Imagine if you never failed at a single thing you tried because you continued to embrace them, no matter what difficulty you faced. Imagine that we can succeed at everything we try, but the mind usually stops us from achieving things that seem beyond our abilities. The very idea can liberate us from our own unwillingness to try harder.

The problem with most things we try, whether they’re creative or not, is that we expect them to go smoothly every time – especially if we believe in certain spiritual concepts. We’ve learned that we’re infinite spiritual beings who are capable of anything we put our minds to, and this can cause us to expect things to flow easily for us, even if it’s our first time trying them.

As we’ve learned (and as I’ve said before), being infinite doesn’t mean we can instantly master any skill or talent – it means we’ve been endowed with the diligence and perseverance to keep going, keep learning and keep developing.

We are infinite, and we really can do anything and everything we put our minds to. The trick is that we aren’t supposed to be good at anything overnight. Can you imagine how boring it’d be to have no goals to strive for; no aspirations to chase? There wouldn’t be much of a point to learning, growing and refining ourselves from within these lower realms.

Yes, we’ll find things we’re naturally good at; things we seem to have a natural talent or knack for, but even those things will need developed if we want to properly do them and there will be times when we don’t seem very good at them.

Similarly, there’ll be things we really want to do but we aren’t very good at when we first try them. These will always be the hardest to develop, and they’ll require a lot of effort, perseverance and confidence, but we can develop them just as much as we can the things we’re already naturally good at.

I’d recommend finding something we’re naturally good at and pursuing it, but if something we aren’t great at calls us as strongly as the things we are, we’ll want to expect some hardship along the way. Especially if the things we want to do will be seen or heard by others, we’ll want to have a lot of faith and confidence in ourselves.

I’m learning that self-confidence is extremely important for the common creative person. Creativity requires the willingness to believe in ourselves, even when we know we aren’t doing very well, and along with perseverance, self-confidence will help us steer clear of the negative self-talk that’s destroyed artists who had a lot of potential.

“Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.” – Mary Pickford (2)

There will be times when we know we aren’t doing so well, and those will be the times we want to give up the most. But we’ll have to keep going, keep having faith in ourselves, and keep in mind that as long as we persevere and detach from the creative process so the universe can work through us, we will achieve our goals.

We might have some trouble in the beginning, but it’ll be worth it when we’ve honed our craft to the exact point we want. From there, we can develop it more and make it even better.

We have to be willing to meet failure if we want to develop anything successfully, but it helps to see that failure isn’t actually real. The worst thing we can do when we feel like we’ve failed is solidify it by giving up, and we can never fail if we never give up.

I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want to fail anymore. I don’t want to give up on things that don’t initially work for me, and I want to keep persevering and stay strong no matter what. Maybe some of you can say the same, and all these lessons are refining us to the point that we can truly and genuinely influence others for the better.

All we have to do is stay dedicated, and doors will open for us where there were only brick walls.

“Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” – Robert Schuller (3)

Footnotes:

  1. Quote Garden: “Failure Quotes and Sayings” at –http://www.quotegarden.com/failure.html
  2. Loc. cit.
  3. Loc. cit.

 

About the Author:  Wes Annac

I’m a twenty-one year old writer, musician and blogger, and I created The Culture of Awareness daily news site.

The Culture of Awareness features daily spiritual and alternative news, articles I’ve written, and more. Its purpose is to awaken and uplift by providing material about the fall of the planetary elite and a new paradigm of unity and spirituality.

I can also be found on Facebook (Wes Annac and The Culture of Awareness) and Twitter.

 

I’m a twenty-two year old spiritual writer, blogger, musician, and channel for the creative expression of the inner universe, and I created The Culture of Awareness daily news site. The Culture of Awareness features daily spiritual and alternative news, articles I’ve written, and more. Its purpose is to awaken and uplift by providing material about the fall of the planetary elite and a new paradigm of unity and spirituality. I’ve contributed to a few different spiritual websites including The Master Shift, Waking Times, Golden Age of Gaia, Wake Up World and Expanded Consciousness. I can also be found on Facebook (Wes Annac and The Culture of Awareness) and Twitter, and I write a paid weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to for $11.11 a month here.

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