If you failed, that’s okay!

“I failed”  — probably the two hardest words for anyone to say.

Embracing failure has never been something that’s taught or talked about commonly in the infinite wisdom that the world has to offer. You’re born into an ever successful world, and failing is something to get shunned over. People feed the mightiness of being successful in your mind, about everything you do, to such an extent that you almost become hardwired to be afraid of failing.

“Failing” has a negative construct in society, so much so, that people are often afraid of even attempting anything they feel that they’ll not be instantly good at. A constant fear of society, on the edge of its seat to pop in a critique as soon as you fail. 

All the while, society does not spurn in sharing that critique, grasping every opportunity, every attempt to “knock you down”.

The shunning and the knocking down by society makes the ‘fear of failure’, so deeply rooted that after a while, you stop trying new ventures, new activities in life, fearing that you might not be instantly good at it.

Even if you do try something, your frail attempts to acquire any level of skill over time, get overthrown by not instantly being good at it, or not getting an appropriate amount of approval from society. Ultimately leading to you not having any passion for it, and ending up in a state of 

“Yeah, I used to play guitar, but I don’t anymore”

“Yes, I was good at badminton, but not the best, so I stopped”

You steer clear of anything that you’re not good at, hoping to only do things in life that you can do ‘successfully’, which in the end leads to another construct of society which is to earn money.

Money is something everyone is obsessed with, and if there’s something you are not good at, and you can’t earn money from it, you’re better off slaving away at a corporate job, which you’re also not good at, but at least that pays the bills.

Nobody does anything for the sole purpose of enjoying it anymore. It’s either to earn money or approval in the form of likes, subscribers, and so on.

It’s so overwhelming for people to disconnect for a while and do things they actually enjoy, and not get burdened by the “social media fatigue”. The world is always watching!

Everyone’s shooting for the stars, setting up new businesses, getting crazy increments, earning so much money they can’t even count, achieving milestones after milestones, while you and I, are here afraid to even learn that new song on guitar, or play badminton with your buddy on the weekend, or maybe whoop it, and take up a whole new hobby. Maybe learn salsa?

In the end, I think as the world becomes technically advanced, swoon by AI, and everyone around you becomes extremely successful…it’s kinda okay to start again now, and maybe take that salsa lesson.

Because being open to failure, helps you realize the vastness of life there is to be lived, and everything you can do in this life, even if you’re not the best at it!