What to Remember When You Feel Like a Failure

Sometimes we all fall short of the mark. We shoot for a huge, life-altering goal, we map out every detail, we jot down benchmarks to get us there…and we come nowhere close to it.

We want to disappear, to push it out of our heads and forget we ever even tried, to magically prevent people from ever bringing it up. And yet, none of those things are possible.

Adam Jeske has been there. In the September/October issue of Relevant, the writer talks about heading on big missions trips with his wife, only to return home three times over nine years. Each time, he felt like a failure. He didn’t create the next charity: water or Pencils of Promise or TOMS. He just worked on various projects, without a huge win or success to show for it.

What he realized, however, was that he needed to redefine what it meant to be successful, and reframe how he viewed failure:

“After all, failures are how we grow, and they’re only problematic if they are not instructive,” he writes.

Jeske looked back at each trip and asked what he could take away from the fits and stops and shortcomings. They were moments to learn, and not just as a treacly coping mechanism to help him deal with feeling “less than” in those moments. He made peace by putting those lessons to use, and gaining some perspective along the way — namely, that success is most often incremental:

Thirty-six percent of the world’s population lived on less than $1/day in 1990; today, that’s less than 14 percent, the article states. Bit by bit, we’re making a difference. It’s our continued commitment over the years, even if it doesn’t result in headline-grabbing statistics, that causes major changes in the world.

 

This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday.