Yes, you read that correctly. It is a new movement, get on board.
Let me break this down for you.
Most of us came from the belief that success equals happiness. How did you feel after the last goal you achieved? It didn’t quite “hit” the way you expected it to, did it? You thought you were going to feel the warm, tingly feeling of accomplishment or the bold bravado of newfound power. Whatever you were expecting to feel, you most likely didn’t.
What you probably felt was closer to a little stress or anxiety. What you probably thought was, “what’s next?”
So you set your sights on a new goal with the hopes that this time, this accomplishment, would finally bring you to the pinnacle of happiness.
Many of us find ourselves on the hamster wheel of achievement, endlessly looking for the point where we can rest with the crown of success on our weary heads, only to find it doesn’t quite work this way. I am 45 years old and am just figuring this out.
Happiness is in growth, not success. Success is just the byproduct.
Success is enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. But it gets old after time and you will find yourself back at the drawing board looking for something new to try. It is like a drug. What you crave is the feeling that comes from growth. You once thought you were chasing success, you now know you were chasing the wrong carrot.
Happiness is the feeling when you capture new knowledge that can be utilized for the greater good. Happiness is the feeling of being able to better contribute to a cause that aligns with your values.
How is this the case?
Humans crave safety, belonging, and mattering.
In Christine Comaford’s article The 3 Things All Humans Crave — And How To Motivate Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, she illuminates:
In every communication, in every conflict, we are subconsciously either reinforcing or begging for safety, belonging, mattering or a combination.
We all want to know we matter, we belong, and therefore, we are safe. We do this by contributing our knowledge and what we have learned through our experiences. Through contributing we matter and when we matter we feel safe.
The only way to gain knowledge and experience to contribute is to try something new. And then to fail at it.
Here is where I get back to why failing is so cool and why we need more of it in our lives.
Failure is none other than the right step at the wrong time or the right time, just the wrong step.
Growth is about trying something new and failing. You learn more from failing than you ever will from succeeding. It can be an embarrassing, frustrating, and sometimes painful lesson, but within it is growth. Growth is what you really crave, not success.
When you try something that works, you don’t spend time understanding why it worked, you just move on to the next step. When you fail, you must first understand why it failed and then return to the drawing board. You gain so much more when you fail. You gain wisdom and perspective. You expand your horizons and your circle of influence. You push beyond your comfort zone. You gain momentum and, funny enough, you gain self-confidence because you learn what works by learning what doesn’t.
If you aren’t failing at something you aren’t pushing yourself enough to grow.
The other catch is failing keeps you invested. If you already knew everything, and everything you tried was an instant success, you would be bored. If you didn’t have to work for it, and often that means feeling some level of pain, you won’t respect it.
The tricky thing to learn so you can start failing with confidence is to train your mindset to think about failing in a positive light. I used to feel this gut check when something I tried went awry. It would make me stop in my tracks and retreat. Second-guess myself. Then I learned to enjoy that feeling by changing the thought pattern attached to it.
I reminded myself of the tried and true sales theory that every “no” gets you closer to a “yes.”
I changed how I think and feel about failure. I learned how to make it a positive as opposed to a negative because it means I am growing, I am learning, I am becoming a better contributor.
So every time you fail, give yourself a pat on the back for succeeding, bask in the warm light of growth, and then get out there and try again.
***And let me remind you to believe in the phenomenon that occurs when you combine desire, faith, and simple planning to catapult yourself into the realm of all things possible.
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