Give Yourself Permission To Fail
“Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.”
I love audiobooks; especially the ones that are read aloud by the author herself, an author who seems to select each word specifically for both eyes and ears. I'm currently in the midst of listening to Shonda Rhimes' audiobook, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person for the third time.
The urge to listen or read one of my favorite books again comes like a whisper. It usually takes me a few days to give in, seemingly convinced that I already know what's in it. But reading it and really getting it are two very different things.
If you are a woman, especially a working mother, I hope you'll give Shonda’s audiobook a listen. (Yes, you read that right. Shonda. I feel as if we are on a first name basis now. After all it is my third listen.) In it, she spouts story and wisdom with the rhythm of Dr. Seuss. If you’ve watched Miranda Bailey spit truth at Richard Webber or seen Olivia Pope get her words on, then you know what I’m talking about.
I found the nugget of truth that called me back to Year of Yes in the commencement speech Shonda gave at Dartmouth in 2014. If you haven’t heard it, it's worth your time. Hurry, listen, before you remember that you’re not graduating, you didn’t go to Dartmouth, and you don’t have time to listen to a commencement speech.
Today, that's the insight I needed to get down deep in my bones, because I like being good at things. I like succeeding. And, I like to have it all. So much so that sometimes when I feel like I'm failing in one area, I just give up on it all together. A great example of that is this, my blog.
The last time I posted a blog was April 2015, almost two years ago now. I’ve spent the last six months aching to write again. But I wouldn’t let myself until I could figure out how to explain the gap like a job seeker looking for an acceptable way to overcome a lapse of employment on a resume. But today, as I listened to Shonda drop wisdom for all those graduates, I finally got it.
In my time away from writing, I’ve been succeeding. I’m working with two innovative and original organizations locally, DOWNTOWN CHURCH and The ART of Real Estate. I’ve partnered with BlueVolt in Portland, OR to bring learning solutions to companies like Microsoft, Caterpillar, and Digimarc. I’ve fallen in love with the passionate work of local entrepreneurs who are juggling motherhood and business ownership with grace and determination.
I've made strides in my personal life as well by following a budget for the first time, finding a workout that is just right for me (thank you, Barre3), and re-watching every single episode of Grey’s Anatomy. But most important is my desire to create a space where two teenage boys can become men - which is happening so rapidly that they may have graduated and moved out of the house by the time I get back there this afternoon.
But as I write this, I’m not there with them. I’m not at Barre3. I’m not editing the DOWNTOWN CHURCH website or following up with my coaching clients. I’m not working on the storyboard for BlueVolt that is due this week. I’m not managing my budget or planning what we’ll have for dinner. In this moment, I'm failing in all of those areas where I'm used to succeeding. Perhaps TOO used to succeeding.
Because giving myself permission to step away from all of those things in this moment required a split second decision to pull over on my way home. I stopped at a park only five minutes from my home. My car crooked in its spot, I grabbed my laptop, but not my phone, and headed out like a madwoman. Even a moment of contemplation or hesitation could wreck my entire plan.
As luck would have it, I immediately spotted a tree whose root system formed a nook just the right size for my bottom and who beckoned me to come, sit, write. And so I did. In the nook of a tree just off Lake Murray Boulevard this blog post was born. And it felt so good that for just an hour or so I forgot about all those things I should have been doing.
In the almost two years since I’ve posted on my blog, my mind has harassed me with me questions: “Who will even notice? Who reads your blog anyway? And what’s the point?”
The point is, I like it. I like writing. I like telling my stories. I like telling everything, even the parts that my self-respecting older sister Shelley would advise me not to share. It fuels my creativity and fills me up. And when I stay away for too long, I have this nagging feeling that I’m failing at what’s quite possibly the one thing I was born to do. You know, like a fish was born to swim or a bird was born to fly. It's just what they do, without a need to be great. It's what they do to survive.
When I stopped writing, I missed it. I felt less like me. My logical, rational, time crunching, productive mind wants it to make sense for me to take time out of my busy day to write. But there's another part of me that doesn’t care if I'm failing at everything else for a Sunday afternoon with my laptop literally on my lap, my bottom soaked from the damp old tree, and my me-ness brimming over.
Thank you, Shonda, for helping me understand that even though there's a tradeoff in finding time to do the thing that makes me more me, it’s one worth taking. Even if it means giving myself permission to fail.
I wonder, what would happen if you gave yourself permission to fail today, too, so that you could succeed at being more…you?