I used to carry so much shame about my failures. I never spoke them. I hid them from the world. I projected my strengths and hid my weaknesses. I only spoke about my victories. Yes, that sort of works, and it will impress some types of people, but at some point it just wasn’t working for me anymore.
It fed my imposter syndrome. My list of failures I carried like the chains the character Marley carried in A Christmas Carol. The chains were my secret shames.
Until 1 day it changed. As I began to feel more and more gratitude for the life I have today, then those failures actually become a necessary part of creating the life I’m living. If my truth is I’d never trade the life I’m living at this moment for anything, then I must accept and be grateful for those failures as well.
If they were necessary, then why should I see them as negative?
What if they weren’t just not negative, but actual strengths?
What if those same failures, not only created the life I have today, they also make me extremely attractive to the rest of the world, and not the shame I thought?
What if it was as simple as flicking a light switch that I could see it that way?
Here are some of my biggest fails:
- I never completed high school. I dropped out. I’ve never had a piece of paper with my name on it in my entire life. I’d be unemployable if I tried to get a job.
- I slept on the floor of my office for 2 years, homeless, and lying to everyone about it.
- I got myself banned from entering the United States for working as a DJ without a work visa. That denied me of the money opportunities and essentially ended my career.
- I didn’t file my taxes for 7 years and had the tax man literally banging at my door.
- Those tax problems made me go through a personal bankruptcy, and had to start over.
- After my DJ career ended, I had nothing to fall back on and was so broke I could hardly feed my family. That period lasted for years.
- I’ve bombed on stage. Done shows where no one showed up, or had to endure the humiliation of it not going well. I have a countless list of dead projects that went nowhere.
- I hid from my business partner for years, afraid to get on the phone with him. That eventually led me into a crisis I could not avoid any longer.
- Most recently, I abdicated instead of delegated, resulting in a painful 2 years of transition and rebuilding that personally cost me over a million dollars of my own money.
AND… the above list, the life I’ve lived until now, has created a life I would not trade away for anything or any amount of money.
I didn’t come to this overnight. Some of these took many years to become grateful for. Adversity is never enjoyable while you are in the middle of it, and it’s even worse when it is by your own hands.
The above list are things done by me, not to me. That is a key differentiator. As I learn to forgive myself and be grateful, it is for the things I had and have control over.
All those things have made me who I am today. All of those failures have stories attached to them, about how I grew because of it, or what new opportunities were created because of them. A lot of those failures resulted in me being forged in fire and stronger because of it. They’re as necessary to the life I have today as my greatest successes.
I failed my way to my dream life, the life I’ve created today.
What have been some of your greatest fails and how have they actually facilitated the life you have today?
