Month: December 2014

It’s over, you’ve bottled it, and the ashes in your mouth taste horrendous. It feels as if the world finally knows how pathetic and useless you really are, and everyone’s laughing at you. You’ve failed. Your third-grade teacher’s theatrical sighs ring in your ears, followed shortly by her now-proven-true prediction: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

Failure. We fear it because it hurts. It dents our egos and makes us vulnerable to the pointed barbs of others. But if you feel like a failure, first ask yourself this: How did I fail? Because if you gave it your all, if you put your heart and your soul on the line and fate simply decided against you, you shouldn’t be all that concerned. Here’s why.

You didn’t really fail. You just discovered a way that didn’t work.

Straight from the horse’s mouth. A horse named Thomas Edison (OK, not a horse, but the genius inventor) who failed numerous times over the course of his lifetime. Edison had a pragmatic view of failure: every failure provided information, and eventually, all that information would provide the basis for his success. “Many of life’s failures,” Edison is recorded as saying, “are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Real failure is to be content with failure.

You only really fail if you accept that you have failed. And the real treat is that no one can decide this except you. If you’re alive, you can try, and no one can tell you differently. “When I was young,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, “I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.”

Being successful without failing first just doesn’t feel right.

How much fun could it possibly be to succeed all the time? Would you even know what success felt like, if it was all you had? Failure provides both a helpful reality check and a counterpoint to success. The champagne tastes that much sweeter when you’ve really earned it.

You’re never a failure unless you blame others.

Taking responsibility for your failures enables you to learn from them. How often in society do we see the buck getting passed, with no one willing to stand up and admit their error? It takes a brave person to face the music, to shoulder the disappointment or scorn of others. But that attitude can only bring success in the long term, as it breeds the strength necessary to persevere.

Failure is an event, not a person.

If you fail at something, your failure doesn’t define you. You are just as unique and able to make a difference as you’ve always been, so why take it personally? If anything, your failure tells you something positive about yourself. Consider the words of Woody Allen: “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very

For many people, the holiday season is the busiest, most complicated, most stressful time of year.

Holiday parties, gift shopping and wrapping, decorating, travel plans, end-of-the-year projects, planning for the new year … these are all added on top of your regular business. And life before the holidays was already pretty busy.

So what can we do to simplify? Is it even possible to simplify when things are getting crazy?

Yes, it’s possible — with some willingness to change. If you want things to be exactly as they are, you can’t simplify. But if you’re open to change, and have an open mind about your routines and priorities and projects and more, you can simplify.

One method to go about this is to ask yourself a series of questions. Now, it takes a minute or two to reflect on these questions … but if you have five questions, that will only take 5-10 minutes. That’s totally worth the time investment if it greatly simplifies your life, reduces your busy-ness and stress, and makes you calmer and happier. Take the time now to reflect.

Here are the ones I’ve found useful:

What are you striving for? In our lives, we’re always striving for something: success, higher numbers at work, a new house, achievements to add to the notches on our belts, financial independence, an image that we want others to have of us … something. We aren’t always aware of it. So take a minute to reflect: what are you striving for right now? You can tell what it is by what’s stressing you out, what’s been occupying your mind, what fills your life with things to do. But if you can loosen your grip on what you’re striving for, you can simplify. You might even realize that this thing you’re striving for isn’t real, and is only a fantasy. It’s not important. In fact, you can have happiness right now, without this thing you’re striving for, if you accept that what you have is already good enough. Where you are is already perfect.

What are you clinging to? We all cling to things in our lives: our Christmas traditions, our love of sweets, our Internet distractions, our need to be right, our desire for justice in unfair situations, our craving for recognition and admiration. We are not usually aware of this clinging, but it feels like a tightness, stress, unwillingness to let go of how things are or how you want them to be. Take a minute to reflect on what you don’t want to let go of, what causes you this tightness and stress, what makes you dig in your heels.

What can you limit yourself to? If you have 50 things on your plate, will you really have time to eat all those things? Will you have the space to give any of them focus? Will you enjoy all of them? What if you only limited your plate to five things? You’d have more space, more focus, more enjoyment. Take a minute to look at the various areas of your life right now, and see if you can limit each one: have a limit on your tasks each day, a limit on meetings or parties, a limit on requests you can say yes to, a limit on how much time you spend on email or social media, a limit on how many hours you work. Set arbitrary limits and force yourself to make choices. Adjust the limits if absolutely necessary, but don’t just widen the floodgates because you don’t want to choose. Choose, and your life will get simpler. Say no to the rest, or get out of those commitments by saying you can’t do them.

Who do you want to spend more time with? Spending time with friends and loved ones is the best way to use your holiday time. But you can’t say yes to everyone: what if you could only choose 3-5 people to spend more time with? Maybe fewer, depending on what your family situation is (people with 6 kids can’t cut out a few kids from the list, but if you don’t have kids, your list can be shorter). Take a minute to think who that might be. Now prioritize your time so that you limit everything else (Question 4 above) but make time for those people. Make some dates/appointments with them, block off time on your calendar, and make this time actually happen.

What can you let go of? Think of the things you’re striving for, clinging to … can you let go of them? Before you say no, consider how it might be possible. And when you limit things in your life, see if you can let go of the things that don’t make the cut.

Letting go isn’t easy, because if it’s in our lives, that means we’ve already said yes, have already decided its important enough to be in our lives. But if you don’t let go, your life remains complicated. You are trying to say yes to everything, and that means you have too much on your plate. That leads to busy-ness, stress, unhappiness, and worse health.

Simplicity requires asking these tough questions, and then learning to let go. That isn’t easy work, but the alternative is much harder.