Follow the Bread Crumbs

I've been working on a book for the last four years, although in reality it's been 43 years in the making.  It's about attitude and failure but more specifically how the former affects the latter.  The title is: Falling is the Easy Part.  It is, in part, about failure but more importantly the realization that you'll face your own "now what do I do?" moment.  Life goes on but you need to make a choice first: succumb to the setback or discover the lesson.  The question is, how do you find a positive attitude after falling?  Follow the bread crumbs.

"In life, people trip.  Most people fall.  Some people turn that into a beautiful, beautiful dance." ~ John Mayer

For some reason many of us think of failure as a catastrophic event.  Almost as if it's an irrecoverable slippage from our track through life.  It's not.  We fail in some way nearly every single day.  Granted, there is a significant difference between failing to wake up at sunrise to exercise and failing as an employee by stealing--where deeper underlying character issues need to be resolved--but the point is we easily dismiss many trivial failures quickly.

The real issue here is not whether or not we fail; the issue is a two-step evaluation of the aftermath:

1. How well do we either harbor or jettison the feelings of failure?
2. How much did we value the opportunity?

We often hold on to the feelings of failure because we sulk in the thoughts that we won't realize the benefits of the opportunity had we succeeded.  The aftereffect I brood most about is how my failure might affect my kids' future.  Nothing has happened to justify these thoughts but I somehow continue to battle myself over thoughts of hypotheticals.

Let's take job loss for example.  You've been fired or laid off for some reason, so you reached the point of failure when you became incapable of meeting some expectation you set for yourself.  That expectation was born when you faced an opportunity and imagined the outcome and benefits.  With that you took a step in a new direction and here we are.

Falling down in life is the easy part.  It's the choice thereafter that becomes difficult: succumb to the setback or discover the lesson.  Succumbing to the setback is akin to hiding from life.  It's giving up.  It's using a single event to define an entire lifetime.  It's adopting a belief that everything leading up to that failure was a failure as well.  Such a fallacy!  There you stood weighing the benefits of the opportunity you chose to pursue., and all your actions and decisions up to that exact moment led you to that possibility.  How can you call that a failure?

The truly amazing part is that, believe it or not, you had already failed in some way prior.  Even in the most mundane sense you got on with things after failure and you succeeded again.  Don't you see that you really can overcome setbacks?  The crippling feeling you have now is just your mind fretting over the missed benefits of this opportunity.  That's what is causing you continued distress.  It's your mind focusing on what could have been.

The second option is to discover the lesson.  I can attest that sometimes it's unimaginable to believe something positive can come from failure.  Where do you begin to look for the positive?  In that case, look to the moment of failure and work backward.  Positive decisions and emotions led you to the brink of opportunity.  Now transition your thoughts away from what went wrong and focus on what went right.  Follow the bread crumbs back.  They are clues to help you find the happiness, positive characteristics, confidence and enthusiasm you had.  Only then will you be able to see the entirety of the situation and the path you took.  That is your lesson.

"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens." ~ Khalil Gibran

Recapturing the moment you stood on the brink of opportunity is the positive element I want to focus on.  Prior to your failure you discovered an opportunity and thought so highly of it that you decided to leave your comfort zone and reach for it.  Remember how it made you happy to imagine reaching this goal?  Happiness gave you the confidence to take that step.  Looking back at the job loss example, that job offer came after you stood tall in an interview and sold your abilities!  You convinced the hiring manager or owner that you brought some serious value to the game.  Look in the mirror now and tell me whether that's who you see today.  My bet is no.  Today you are sad, and that sadness is the wall between you and the next opportunity.  Follow the breadcrumbs back to the mindset of yesterday, take a deep breathe and live in that moment.

There's a reason we leave bread crumbs...to find our way back; back to some point in time when we felt the confidence to take another step.  In your time of failure, follow the bread crumbs.

Purpose and Re-Purpose

I had a specific life plan when I was preparing to graduate high school.  It did not include college.  It was down a specific path into the "real" world.  It took a couple years to reach that goal but I made it.  I realized my purpose.  Check that, I realized the purpose I envisioned in my early twenties.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to shed before the new one can come." ~ Joseph Campbell

The problem exists when the criteria used to craft our plan changes.  Life happens and things change, both from our choices and the world's choices.  What we believe to be our purpose or direction alters.  Some might call this growing.  It's here that we can either look back with a mournful eye and create fear for what comes next, or we can re-purpose our lives.

My girlfriend is the queen of recycling and reusing items.  She's known as the woman who prints on the back of anything before using a new piece of paper.  I love that mentality.  Very little is void of value.  While driving around one day she pointed out a building that was being remodeled; re-purposed, as she put it.  It seemed to make complete sense to me at that exact moment.

"Each day brings new circumstances that allow us to learn more about life and our own desires.  Our plan today may not suit who we are tomorrow.  The journey of a lifetime need not be mapped in the mind of life's novices." ~ Jason Huntsinger 

I reached that point in my life where, through my own past choices,  I needed to realize a new path. At times it's scared me.  At times it's liberated me.  I've felt like the last 20 years were all for naught simply because I failed to discover the value in failure, and so I viewed it all as failure.  But then I finished that book, wrote an epilogue to myself and closed it up.  What a read!  The most relevant learning in this lifetime comes dressed as failure, but we're too afraid to acknowledge its existence.

Volume 2 has begun...

I've come to understand more and more that we tend to look back with dissatisfaction when we create expectations for ourselves.  The days in our lives and the world around us are far too fluid to try to place it into a mold for what we believe to be perfection.  The life that I envisioned to be in balance when I was 20 is unrecognizable today.  Happiness is not found by constantly checking to make sure the plan is in balance.  It's found in the joy of creating balance.

The only shame in a life of re-purpose is failing to see it.