If failure is the gateway to success then why do so many of the population get so angry or frustrated with it? Why are we so afraid of it?
Is it fear of how others see us?
Is it our own ego telling us we should be better than that?
Why does this affect us so much?
I get the feeling this blog will raise more questions than it answers but maybe that is the point, to find the right question.
Failure is everywhere, it’s been with us since birth yet it still seems to affect so many of us in so many different ways. I think it’s amazing how we can be perfectly ok with failure in one area of our life yet we become so affected or fearful of failure in another.
failure
/ˈfeɪljə/
noun
1.
lack of success.
2.
the neglect or omission of expected or required action.
Ultimately everyone is a beginner at some point in their life with everything and somewhere along the line we choose or are conditioned to what topics or areas of life we feel comfortable or uncomfortable with failure and success and all the progress or lack there of that is associated with both avenues.
Often as climbers we have a few levels of reactions to failure.
I won’t try that because it’s too hard.
Ive fallen 1000 times on that move, Im never going to try it again.
I don’t do slab.
That wall has lots of people climbing on it, people will watch me so I will stay away so people don’t see me fall.
This is where it starts to get tricky, its usually ego that steers us away from facing these challenges, so how do we get around that?
Changing our narrative is one way. What is it that we are searching for, is the the superficial result of getting to the top or is it the deeper level questions, what am I missing? What is the lesson I need to find here? Am I willing to face my fear and climb even though people may be watching? Is fear of failure, fear of falling or my physical ability really what’s holding me back? Maybe its our process to approaching climbs?
There’s a few stages we need to go through to overcome these challenges.
Firstly we need to identify when it is our ego that is stopping us from progressing, whether that be from influencing our mental state by generating frustration or anger, whether we just aren’t trying something because “we don’t want to” or when the fear side of our personality is being triggered when the logical side of the thing infant of us is actually quite safe.
Secondly we need to change our practices both in how we are approaching the challenge in front of us and we need to change the questions or start asking questions to look for the real solution to our problem.
Some question examples:
What is the lesson I need to learn here?
If I change x what will happen to why?
Why do I feel the way I do right now?
Thirdly, we need to spend time being uncomfortable, this is the part that only works with practice, fall off those moves, climb in front of people, spend time in those uncomfortable positions with the intent of learning something about the situation as a whole and use it as an opportunity to become comfortable with the challenges that are being faced.
Fourth, Practice it more. Get on the busy wall inform of people. Fall off that anti style climb. learn to be OK with it.
Those area’s I life that are “failures” they are all opportunities for growth ad ultimately success, Identify clearly what success means as the get curious about practice. Deliberate Practice.
Fail more, this opens more doors to success
