FAILURE – WHAT IS IT REALLY.

A blog about failure. Wow we all really love reading about that! And I nearly failed to write about it. Self-perpetuating!!

I cannot think of another word in our language that conjures up so much tension and anxiety. It can freeze you into inaction. The fear of failing can cloud good judgment  and decisions, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Failure has huge negative connotations. You can hauled over the "coals" at work, embarrassed in front of workmates. Managers can tear "strips of meat off you". There is no end to the list of people who will tell you that you "stuffed up", or failed at this or did not do this the right way. All negative and all done the wrong way. I am also very guilty of all the above as I am not known for having a lot of patience. Getting better every day though and that is always a step forward, on the path to excellence that is a goal with no destination.

So how can we turn this negative word around.

Now that I have my dog Courage beside me these days I am reorienting  myself in the world. One of the projects in my Academy Course was looking at my emotional states, and with the tools that we were taught to use,  examine aspects of my life that were holding back my development, to move forward with confidence and positivity, and the main one was my fear of failing. In dealing with this inability to see myself in a positive state, I ended up finding my dog Courage and I make sure he is with me every day in whatever I do. My other dog Fear, who has been with me for a large part of my life is now in the background. He still follows but at a distance that he has no effect on my thinking. I am aware of him, and I look back at him now and again with compassion because Fear is just who he is, and I accept and respect him for that. But I know and so does he that he has no part in my life.

The next part of this assignment was to really focus on that word failure, and turn it into a totally positive experience so I am not afraid of it.

At Seal  Academy we have recently had a lecture on this very topic. The main point Cmdr Divine was trying to get across was that failure is not an option, it is an imperative for learning. If you fear failure then you will never take a jump, make a commitment, or back yourself and the decisions that you make. You will freeze and stay in your comfort zone you will only be half committed ,and that guarantees the failure that inevitably will come with no learning experience.

So think for a moment, when do we learn and improve? It is when we fall short or "fail" at something. We do not learn much when we succeed other than the confirmation that our decision was the right one and that happiness is a celebration of that decision. Failure, on the other hand is where we learn, if we view it in the right context, and that is the key to the door.

Even though I view failure now as a learning experience, I still stumble over that word, because of the reaction it elicits from others. Again I am guilty of betraying the negativity of failure in others, and we all seem to love criticising each other, and pointing out each other's failures. It is all so negative, and brings on stress that is not needed in an already unsustainably stressful life. So I wanted to in my own mind at least,  turn this experience into a positive one, one that I looked forward to, because it would be a place to learn, where I can make myself a better person. So with my" Toolbox" what could I use to achieve this process.

First of all was the awareness of my BOO (Background of Obviousness). All the things that have happened to me in my past that "colours" or orientate's my view of the world and my interactions in it and with those in it. You really need to have this conscious awareness of those experiences to use the 2nd tool which is the  OODA Loop. The OODA Loop is a decision making process that is taught to a lot of military operational personnel. The acronym stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act, the loop is the re-enactment of that acronym around and around, so it becomes a process of deciding and then refining.

The 2nd "O" in OODA is to Orientate yourself to the observations and research that you have undertaken in the 1st "O" which is Observe. This is where your Background of Obviousness has the most impact on the 3rd part of the loop which is "D",  Decision. How much information, and how you perceive that information all depends on your past experiences. Getting all the information you can, and your ability to perceive it in a neutral light by being aware of your own perceptions is the key to making that good decision. If you gave two people the same information they would possibly end up with 2 different decisions, and actions because their background of obviousness is different, same information but different perceptions. The tools of choice to neutralise your background of obviousness, and to help cultivate a neutral perception are meditation, and yoga, where you reset the orientation button to neutral, calmness, breath mastery, and the beautiful calming flow of yoga. It brings you to a state of "looking at nothing, but seeing everything". So instead of focusing on one thing in the process it is looking at the whole picture. Use whatever suits you. Some like to do it as a mental exercise, I personally like to write things down, like this article, to orientate myself to the big picture facts, and the information I have gathered. The choice is yours but if you follow this paradigm you will be on the way to excellence. Not perfection.

So I set myself a task. I needed to get rid of the word failure, basically because it gave me the "shits"!! I researched through a lot of websites about alternative words for failure that would bring me  at least a feeling of positivity, but I could not find any. I tried different languages but no words seemed to click there  either. Then came phrases and that one came up a big "0" as well. I sat at the computer for a number of nights just looking through different sites with no luck. Then I am out training one afternoon, just running along, minding my own business, not even thinking about all this and all of a sudden from "God only knows" comes this "an unexpected outcome" and the light went on inside, Bingo! It felt just right. Are not words powerful tools.

When I got home, I needed to justify this with my tools. The OODA Loop is a continuous line of thought about gathering, deciding, acting then gathering the new information as a result of your previous decision, seeing whether that decision actually achieved what you wanted and if not then re-deciding and then reacting, a process of "refinement", a pathway to excellence.

An unexpected outcome is really self explanatory. You collected your information, you perceived that information as best you could, then you decided what to do and then you did it. Some people might see that as failure. These days it is now an unexpected outcome and so the learning begins. Where could I have improved on that process to actually achieve the goal that I set myself. So I did not fail but I ended up in a place or at a point that I had not expected and so what do I have to do to get myself on to that path?. Did you need more information? Or different information? Or did you need to change the "WAY" you perceived that information to make a better decision; notice better here not right. What has just happened here with this process is that it is going around and around and around and each time you are refining that process getting closer and closer to where you want to be, and that is the path of excellence. YOU ARE IN A LEARNING EXPERIENCE. And it is enjoyable. It is actually fun to do, because it is you that is doing it. I often wonder why people do not learn well when told something. A simple phrase we were told when we were kids was "do not touch that it is hot". Then how many of us touched something hot when told not to, most of us I bet. We needed that experience to make a connection between the sensation and the word. I bet most of us learnt pretty quickly. And so it is the same here, we need those unexpected outcomes to make better connections between the process and the end result, and if we get rid of the words perfection, perfect, and the right decision, and change it to excellence, and better, we will be continually in a learning experience and that is when we grow. Learning to embrace these unexpected outcomes as our teacher keeps us as the Captain's chair of our bodies, our minds, and our spirit.

So there you have it. The result of my journaling, meditation, yoga, physical practice                                              AN UNEXPECTED OUTCOME = LEARNING EXPERIENCE = GROWTH = EXCELLENCE. How cool is that! I am going to end with a famous paragraph from Theodore Roosevelt's speech about the Citizen of the Republic. I have renamed this paragraph  the "CREED OF THE WARRIOR".

THE CREED OF THE WARRIOR

It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who errs and comes up short again, and again. Because there is no effort without  error, or shortcoming. But who knows the great  enthusiasms. The great devotions. Who spends himself  for a worthy cause. Who, at best, knows, in the end, the triumphant of high achievement. Who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat.