Key Point: we have to learn how to fail in order to learn how to succeed. And, we have to learn how to leave in order to understand what it is to be at home. Constructively embracing failing and departure involves establishing our own framework for personal growth. What is yours?
Most of us have heard of the concept of learning from our mistakes. But, do we really embrace and understand that concept? Richard Rohr in his challenging book entitled Falling Upward makes this difficult point: any attempt to engineer your own enlightenment is doomed to being incomplete because it is ego driven. That is, we are choosing where to focus our improvement. But when we really fail and face humiliation, we are forced to look where we haven’t or have preferred not to. When we are open to looking in our darkest more hidden areas, real profound learning emerges. This becomes real self improvement; not just reading about it.
Leaving involves stepping out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we choose to leave an affiliation. At other times the change is not our choice. But, leaving always involves the opportunity of letting go of validations, smallness, securities, and even hurts that limit us. It is the time for renewal. Some believe that leaving is when the greatest personal development occurs.
Character Move:
- Embrace failure and recognize it is going to happen to every one of us, and likely more than once.
- Use failure as a mirror. Look and learn where you normally might not see. Accept and let it make you more authentic.
- Embrace leaving and rejoice in the ability to renew. Yes it will be uncomfortable. But everything ends. Move on and know that you will develop if your mind set is open to renewal.
- Recognize that relative to failure and loss, you don’t really have a choice. Both will happen. As the saying goes “God comes disguised as your life.” It is the way we chose to react and move forward that allows us to “fall upward” as Rohr so wonderfully describes.
Falling upward in the Triangle,
Lorne