Failure and Criticism

Stop trying to make me feel better by downplaying my failure!!!

Are you tired of hearing how "every no brings you closer to a yes?" Want to marinate in your failure and commiserate instead of receiving cliched motivational posters?

Let’s talk about failure. Real failure; when you really needed and wanted to succeed and you gave it your all and you should have made it, but you didn't. 

A lot of people will ask what happened. Sometimes we try to give explanations; sometimes they are for us more than they are for the listener. A lot of times the stories change and morph over time. New characters enter while older one's exit stage left. As I myself told these stories I realized something powerful. I have no idea why ________ did not work. It's like I was the victim of a mugging in a dark alley. I know my wallet is gone and several human beings are responsible. One of the guys was wearing a black hat, but I don’t know if that is a relevant detail or the key to the case or just an unrelated fact.

That’s a real failure. The type that gets you to doubt your intuition and everything else.

In my early professional career, I was part of colossal failure and there were organizations and people that I loved and cherished ended up closing there doors. I blamed myself for the failure and I blamed others. That was more than a decade ago. Since then I have learned that complex problems don't have simple solutions and complex failures are generally caused by equally complex variables. 

Failure is not unto itself the harbinger of any account of the history which proceeds it.

Then you go on LinkedIn which is a little bit of a professional Lake made for the IIT. Sure, people vent about a hard day or a hard client or a hard job, but when was the last time you read a post about failure. You have friends on LinkedIn who don’t want to change their profile information because it hints to failure. They are not boastful narcissists; on the contrary, they are fragile embarrassed people who feel they have suffered enough, and that they don’t need to endure self-inflicted ridicule.

Sometimes you just need time to think and blame and hate and then begin to heal and maybe you write something like this.

I want to announce that my attempt at understanding life at an early age was a failure. I don’t know why. If you know me or spent any time with me, you will know that I gave it all I had including plenty of time but unfortunately, it was a no go. Why do you ask? I DON’T KNOW! I really don’t and if you think you know but you don’t really know me then you are just a pompous delusional bobblehead. 

I failed and now I am trying to be good at most things I didn't understand and that I wasn't good at.