Hello friends,
Failure. Absolutely no one likes the word failure or the feelings associated with it. Failure leaves many of us feeling down, lost, and just plain yucky. Some of us are more familiar with failure than others.
In college, I had (have?) a really excellent professor who taught me a very valuable lesson about the subject of failure. His motto is "Do and assess," meaning instead of criticizing yourself as you're doing something, just do it and assess later. It really takes the stress out of learning if you think of it like that. This also takes the stress out of "failing." Instead of thinking as failure as a bad thing, you just look at it as an indicator of where you are in that skill so that you know where to adjust before you do it again and assess again. In this way, failing is a natural and acceptable part of learning.
That being said, this thinking is hard to implement in practice, especially when I've spent most of my life avoiding failure like the plague (as most of us do). Well today friends, I failed. Like I said in my last post, this weekend was Camp Rock: The Musical. To make a long story very short, I ended up losing my temper (which is rare for those if you who might not know) and yelled at one of the students. I let one of them get under my skin and I lost my temper, which is a big no no in teaching. When you lose your temper, you lose control which is never something you want to happen ever, let alone when working with teenagers. At the moment I am very ashamed of myself and intend on apologizing to that student when I see them on Tuesday.
Naturally, I called my mother as soon as I realized what I had done. If you don't know my mom, then you are a deprived human being. My mother is an amazing woman who has taken everything that life has thrown at her and turned it into something great. I truly think she is the best mother in the world. Anyway, I called her to talk about how disappointed I was in myself because I let myself lose my temper like that. She pointed out to me that, yes, I could have handled it better but most likely, the kid would be okay and nothing would come of me continuing to beat myself up. I was able to identify and admit my mistake and now I needed to learn from it and be able to let it go (Frozen anyone?). Well, I'm never going to forget this lesson that's for sure. I'm sure I'm going to continue to feel guilty about this for some time but this experience has taught me a very valuable lesson. Don't let anyone get to you like that. I was the adult in the situation and I chose not to act like one. Luckily, this will never happen again.
Failure has become a hard lesson for me to learn. I didn't fail very much growing up. I almost always acted as my parents expected me to, always got good grades in school, and was very naturally talented at singing and music in general. The few times I did fail, I beat myself up a lot because in my book, I was disappointing both myself and those around me because I knew and they knew I could do better. I think that's the hardest aspect of failing for me to stomach. Knowing that when I fail, I could have done so much better and should have done better. But, as that same college professor says, "Don't should on yourself." Nothing will come of me wishing I could have done better. The reality is that I can't go back and change what happened, no matter how much I want to and it's a waste of my mental and emotional energy to wish that I could. I can only use this experience to do better in the future.
So, in conclusion my friends, we all fail. We hate the feeling of failure, but in the end, failure provides some of the best lessons I've ever been taught in my entire life. I will likely never forget this one. Failure is something that we are all afraid of, but we don't need to be. We all fail sometimes, and that's perfectly okay. It's what we choose to do with that failure that really matters. Own your failures and learn from them because they will make you a stronger person.
Until next time (hopefully with a lighter topic),
Jamie
P.S. Feel free to comment with your thoughts below. You don't have to but I'm always curious to see other people's views on things!
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