Have you ever been called a “failure”? Or, have you ever thought of yourself as one?
Maybe you had a bad day and took a drink after two years of solid sobriety. Perhaps you had been working hard towards that promotion, but your colleague got it instead of you. You might be a new mom who is doing your best to figure out what it means to love and raise a child, but you’re constantly being compared to the Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest-moms that seem to do everything perfectly and have all the answers. Surely, all of us qualify as “failures” in some category or another.
We live in a society that is drenched in the expectation of self-improvement, so much so that we turned the word “failure” into a Proper Noun – an identity label – when it was never supposed to be. Just take a stroll into any Half-Priced Bookstore in the County and you’ll without a doubt find a section stuffed with thousands of books under the category “Self-Help”.
Identifying ourselves by our mistakes or our struggles does more harm than good. It teaches our brains to limit our potential for growth and change. It steers our hearts toward self-deprecation and hopeless stagnancy. You are so much more than what you’ve done or what you’ve experienced.
You are not your depression.
You are not your anxiety.
You are not your addiction.
You are not your broken relationship.
You are not your criminal record.
You are not your trauma or grief.
You are not your missed opportunity.
You are you! You are totally, 100% a human being who has likely experienced difficulties and done or said some detrimental things in your life – at least once or twice. But you have bounced back. You have learned from those moments, and you have implemented new approaches and attitudes to navigating similar moments in the future.
Before you try to pull the “honesty” card or the “humility” card to justify identifying yourself as a failure, remember this: honesty and humility are indeed virtues, but they’re practiced by people who are not actively destroying their own self-esteem by believing and embodying the lies our culture would have us believe about ourselves.
Give yourself some grace. Get up and try again. Try 1,000 more times, if you have to, until you get it right. Don’t beat yourself up when it goes wrong. And certainly don’t let our culture’s false stereotypes about what or who you should be beat you up either. Simply own the upsets, work toward rectifying them, and try to do better next time. Fail forward!
If you find yourself dwelling on self-deprecating, or even on self-harming thoughts on a regular basis, please know that our doors are open at The Willow Center. We are here for you, and we can help you restore your pride in yourself and the hope you have for your future. Please reach out to us before those thoughts take control – just call us at 317-852-3690 and we can find a way through it together.
-Written by Chase Cotten, Community Director
