Feeling Like a Failure
Note: Actual author is a random stranger on Reddit, these are their words shared below. I don't have the link to the original post, and I've kept what they've shared down below.
I don’t have a job right now. I haven’t really made any friends. Imagine this:
What if success was guaranteed?
The catch is:
- It takes time
- It takes effort
- It does not go smoothly along the way
- It does not go as fast as we want
- It does not go as easily as we want
Try an experiment where you play a little mental game where you imagine wild success:
- What if all your hard work paid off?
- What if you got your dream job?
- What if you connected with a group of great new friends?
The only thing right now between you & that vision of success is persistence. Or in today's terminology, "grit":
The way I picture success (i.e. achieving what you want) is as an island in the middle of a pond. To get there, there are two types of stepping stones to help us walk towards our goal:
- Right stones, which represent successful steps
- Left stones, which represent failure experiences
It's important to realize a few things here:
- Failure does not mean failing
- Failing means quitting. That's when we stop making progress on our journey!
- Failure is required to achieve success, because (1) nobody learns perfectly, and (2) it's hard to know how to do things right when you don't know how to do things wrong!
Failure tends to feel pretty bad for us, so we have to practice choosing to decouple how we feel from what we let dictate our behavior!
Sometimes we have to go through a few learning experiences to figure out what we really want & to get ourselves in a better position! For example, I spent some time working in corporate America before discovering that I really prefer the flexibility of freelancing in my career field!
Perfection: Ideally, everything would just go smoothly, on-time, on-track, and go the way we want it to go. But it's impossible to control all of the conditions & it's really hard to just magically be "perfect" in our efforts!
Progress: We can also tie our identities to making progress, but man, that's hard to do too, especially when things go SLOW.
Process: This is basically being willing to make & use checklists & then stick with things, so that even when we fall off the wagon or get disheartened, we can soldier on & be persistent in our efforts & be patient in waiting for things to improve!
In the 3-act structure of a story, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. Right now, you're at the part of the hero's journey where the hero is having a hard time & is experiencing doubts. The thing to remember is that persistence is really the primary key to success, because as long as we keep trying, we'll get there, but if we quit before we achieve our goals, then we miss out on finishing walking across those stepping stones of successful steps & failure experiences to get to the Island of Success!
As far as friends go, you can be the sweetest peach in the orchard, but some people simply don't like peaches! Here are a few things to consider:
- What type of social relationship are you looking for?
- People generally respond to how they're treated first: how are you presenting yourself to the world?
- Consider joining in-person & online social groups. That could be taking a dance class or going to a paint night.
Sometimes your journey in life isn't going to feel great; are you willing to be persistent & stick with putting in the effort over time despite that?
What exactly DOES success mean to you? What does that dream job look like? What do those friendships look like?
Rather than being purely reactive, are you willing to be proactive & become the type of person who doesn't settle for less than the job they want?
Anyway, to recap:
- What is success was guaranteed?
- What does WILD SUCCESS look like to you, both in your career & in your social life?
- What can YOU do to be proactive about taking actionable steps to move towards your vision of success in life?
Right now, you're doing great! You've done the first two steps already:
- You've created your initial two goals (you want to have a job & you want to have friends)
- Despite the difficulty you're encountering, you've been applying to new jobs every couple of weeks, so I'm proud of you!
Fast-forward a few decades of sticking with it, and I have a really great job with some really terrific friends! If we don't quit, we'll get there! Good luck!!
