Allowing Ourselves To Fail

Over time, we become accustomed to getting what we want, succeeding, thriving in our good graces. Then when we fail, we can come down harshly on ourselves, be over-critical. But every failure has a purpose in our lives — even if it seems irrelevant at this point. At some time in our future, we may look back and laugh and shake our heads at how critical we were on ourselves. Because every failure strengthens us and reminds us we can do better. There is a lesson hiding behind every experience. It’s your choice how you respond and deal with the negativity in your life.

As a writer, I have faced struggles and failures many times over. Sometimes they drag me down. Sometimes I criticise myself too much — that’s not good enough, sounds as if a monkey wrote that blindfolded and drunk on rum, my writing stinks worse than a skunk. One of the things I’m struggling with this week while writing The Forsaken (the sequel to The Hunted ) is thinking my daily word count is simply not good enough. I’m five days in and I have written a grand total of 13,520 words. Pretty good, right? But the first two days I barely wrote 2,000 words each day and was half struggling to do so. I told myself that’s not good enough because I knew I could do much better. Most days I average 3-4,000. What I’ve learnt is: with every career, even writing, there are good days and bad. You can either work through the bad days or give up. I never ever give up (maybe one of my flaws — superhuman stubbornness?) because I really love writing. Even on the bad days. Take a break if you must, but then get right back to it.

The choice is yours, of course ;-)

Remember: failure is not as big a deal as we make it out to be. Go easy on yourself if you fail. Buy yourself a cupcake and enjoy the sugar rush while it lasts.