If I’m truly honest and open, I have an admission to make: I’m sitting here at my desk, trying to write about failure, and realizing I’m failing at failing.
Not the kind of failure I promised when I declared this my Year of Failure. More like the embarrassing kind where I’m staring at my screen thinking “what the hell am I doing?”
Last night I couldn’t sleep, knowing I had this article to write. I was wrestling with this question: What makes a failure worth pursuing?
Here’s what bubbled up at 3am: The best failures have a want attached to them.
Not just any want. A deep, scary to admit want. Like what happened at COP28 – about a week before I went, I asked myself what I actually wanted from going. Am I looking for business opportunities? Speaking engagements?
And then I realized my true want: I want to solve climate change. Like, Nobel Prize level solve it. And I would introduce myself to every person I meet that way.
Who says that out loud? Well, me. And that was the point.
But here’s where it gets messy…
I’m writing this from my paid-off house, with a nice cushion from selling my company, trying to manufacture “authentic” failure. This isn’t like 20 years ago when I couldn’t make rent and had a young family counting on me. Or even earlier, when I promoted raves, and skirted spectacular failure with every event. I risked it all like Icarus flying close to the sun.
That simply isn’t my life now and I’m embarrassed to even admit that.
I could create safe little failures. I could go try to speak Mandarin at the local Chinese restaurant. That would make for an amusing story, but I know I can lean into fear. That isn’t actually a challenge.
I need to think bigger.
Last week’s TED nomination was a good start, because in the one-in-a-million chance they’d accept me I’d be over the moon. That was a want I carried for years. But now I’ve done my part and not sure where to go next.
Here’s what’s really keeping me up at night:
Sometimes we don’t even allow ourselves to want something because it’s too painful when we don’t get it. I know this because I’ve spent years teaching others about fear and failure, while wearing these Golden Handcuffs of Success that keep me playing it safe.
Too safe.
So here I am, at 6:47am, admitting to the Frolic 100 that I’m failing at failure. Not in some profound way. Just in this messy, real, “I don’t know what I’m doing” way.
Tomorrow’s another day.
Maybe I’ll fail better.
What’s a deep want you’ve been hiding from yourself, because of the pain of potentially failing at it?
