How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong

by Elizabeth Day

Life crises have a way of doing that: they strip you of your old certainties and throw you into chaos. The only way to survive is to surrender to the process. When you emerge, blinking, into the light, you have to rebuild what you thought you knew about yourself.

I learned that if your life is not how you want it to be, then it is never too late to change that life. You just have to be brave enough to take the leap over the side. It will panic you, and make you scared, but once you allow those feelings to subside and once the vortex calms, you will rediscover yourself and find that the world is large and beautiful and offers an endless opportunity to do different things.

‘When you are so broken, you don’t know anything about yourself any more. I mean, I describe it as like you’ve left your own body, it’s a feeling you have: a near-death experience where you leave your own body. Actually, if you’re going through severe domestic violence, male or female, whoever the victim is, you have actually left your own body, you’re no longer that person who is strong. Somebody else has taken you out of yourself and it’s a real struggle to get back into your own body and your own mental state. It’s a very tough thing to do.’

One step at a time. Fill up your heart. Fight on.

That there is no one on this big, wide planet who can understand the you-ness of you more than you.

That you should protect yourself by respecting that, but at the same time, not be overly defensive. That it is a waste of energy building walls against armies that do not yet exist.

That real strength comes from owning your vulnerability and expressing your emotions in a way that i...

We do not exist in a vacuum. We exist in rhythms and melodies that can be harmonious or jarring or syncopated, played in major or minor chords, but the music has to be heard to make an impact. Sound becomes sound by bouncing off other surfaces.

‘I no longer believe that it is anger that is hurting us,’ Rebecca Traister writes, ‘but rather the system that penalizes us for expressing it, that doesn’t respect or hear it, that isn’t curious about it, that mocks or ignores it. That’s what’s making us sick; that’s what’s making us feel crazy, alone; that’s why we’re grinding our teeth at night.

When I finally allowed myself to understand my anger, it turned from hot to cold. I’d been worried that anger belonged to my darker self; that by unleashing it, I’d become a bad person. But that didn’t happen. If anything, acknowledging my anger made me more sane. It made me realise that anger can be a transformative force for good. It pushes you to challenge injustice rather than simply swallow it. It brings you face to face with your own potency. The result was that I felt unquestionably more myself.

We can be angry. We can be honest about it. And we can use it as fuel, motherfuckers.