April 9 2018

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, guys. This is Lisa from LisaJeffs.com. I am having a wonderful Monday evening. I am in the works of planning some really big stuff for all you guys and that’s coming out soon. I’m not gonna get into it now, but that’s what I’m doing today. But I wanted to take a little break and share with you my thoughts on failure.

I recently posted a post and I love seeing everyone’s comments and everyone’s views on failure. Failure is something that even the word failure, it can bring up totally different things for different people. People view it differently, they perceive it differently. What it means to them, it could mean something completely different to someone else. It’s really cool seeing everyone comment and share their view on what failure is.

My view on failure, and failure is something that keeps a lot of people stuck. I can definitely say that fear of failure has been in my sphere before. I mean, anyone who says they’ve never had a fear of failing, I would really question that, especially when we’re moving through years, when we’re just starting to feel into ourselves and who we are and all that good stuff, especially in those teen years when we’re putting ourselves out there.

It can be a scary thing. What I know for myself is when I started to depersonalize failure, it got really easy for me. Not really easy for me to fail, but it got really easy for me to put myself out there because what happened was when something happened and it didn’t work out, and believe me, there’s been so many times when I’ve done something, put something out in my business or tried something new, and it just did not work. But when you depersonalize that, when you separate yourself from something you did, you no longer see yourself as part of that failure.

I say “failure,” failure can bring up a lot of emotions for people. I don’t really see anything as a failure. I don’t really align with that word because I believe everything can be a learning experience. If everything worked out perfectly all the time and everything we wanted just happened and we were perfect at it and it was 100%, that would be a really, really weird, strange world that didn’t promote very much growth. It reminds me of that movie. Who was it with? I can’t remember who was in it.

But it’s back in the ’50s. They get sucked into a TV and they’re back in the ’50s. “Pleasantville.” That’s what it is. If you’ve seen “Pleasantville,” let me know. Leave me a comment. That’s what I see it as, this fake, perfect world where there’s not a lot of growth happening when everything is perfect. Failure is just part of the program. It’s just part of life. The more you fail, the more you know you’re putting yourself out there. If you’ve never failed and you’ve never done anything, how much are you stretching yourself? How much are you stepping out of your comfort zone?

If you’re failing all the time, you know that you’re stepping out of your comfort zone all the time. Back to what I was saying about depersonalizing failure. When you can see what you did as just something you did, it’s not you, and it’s not a reflection on you as a person. What happens when people get really freaked out about failure and almost put themselves in a state of they’re paralyzed? They’re so paralyzed to move forward because they have this fear of possibly failing, having it not work out, having their friends and family see that it didn’t work out.

That is often contributed to the fact that they are personalizing that failure. If something they try to do in, say, their business or their life fails, then suddenly they’re a failure. They’re identifying that failure as, “Well, either that didn’t work, it failed, now I’m a failure.” Then it can get really, really scary to ever try anything new because who wants to feel like a failure? Nobody wants to feel like a failure.

What worked for me was, and this didn’t happen overnight and I wasn’t born just being like, “Oh, failure doesn’t scare me at all.” This takes work. This takes inner work. This takes work around self-worth, around feeling that you are good enough no matter what happens, even if you tried something new and it never worked out. If it’s no reflection on you as a person, as being worthy, as being worthy as a human being.

What I see, and a lot of times when I have client come to me, they’re wrapping their self-worth around with what they do or what they have. Self-worth around income. Self-worth around what their status is in their job. Self-worth around what degrees they have, what degrees, what certifications, all those little great things beside our name. I can’t even remember what they’re called. They’re wrapping all that up with how that makes them worthy as a person.

I know for me, I used to do that, as well. Every certification I got, every other diploma or whatever just added to my feeling of self-worth. It wasn’t until I separated that from, “Okay, those are great and those are wonderful accomplishments, but it doesn’t matter how many degrees you have or what your GPA is. It doesn’t make you more worthy or less worthy as a person.”

When you can really feel that and feel that in your soul and really own that, ’cause a lot of people can say, “Oh, yeah, I feel great. I know I’m worthy,” but inside they’re not owning that, they don’t feel it, and only you know. It’s not that you have to prove it to anyone. You certainly don’t have to prove anything to me. But you know if you feel that worthiness or not. I can tell you because I worked with a lot of people and I can speak for myself that oftentimes that worthiness is not there unless we do the work.

Childhood and teen years have a wonderful way of taking that self-worth and crushing it. All it takes is one little thing to happen. All it takes is one thing to happen when we are kids and suddenly we’ve internalized that one little thing as us not being worthy as people, basically. I’ll tell you, one of my things was getting picked last in gym class and stuff like that. I internalized it as me. I was not good enough.

Now, your rational brain can think, “Well, who cares? It’s just nothing. It didn’t mean anything.” But when we’re kids and something like that happens, and it could be anything, it doesn’t have to be that, could be something like your parents say something to you, could be something as small as a brief comment that a classmate says or a teacher says. Suddenly you have taken that one little thing and internalized it and it shows its head when you’re an adult as, “I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough.”

What happens is when you fail at something, and this could be anything, then suddenly it’s proof that you’re not good enough and you’re not worthy. Then it starts hitting you at your soul, right in your heart chakra. But when you can separate and just be like, “Okay, that was a total bust and didn’t work at all, but it’s no reflection on me as a person. I know I’m worthy. My birth, coming into this world, is worth enough. I don’t need anything else to prove to me that I’m worthy enough,” then you’re at a place where the fear of failing no longer has that real grasp on it.

It no longer has a reflection on you. You tried something, doesn’t work. Okay, next. There’s been tons of things I’ve tried and it’s like, “Okay.” I’ll give you a funny example. I remember when I had this great idea. I was gonna be this roller blader and I was gonna be roller blading everywhere and zooming. Okay, let me tell you. I think I went on my roller blades maybe three times. It was a complete disaster. I couldn’t get it.

I’m sure if I stuck with it, I could have gotten the hang of it. Would I be zooming around like a professional roller blader? Probably not. Maybe. I don’t know. But one could say, “Okay, that was a failure.” I just look at it as something that didn’t work out. I tried it, I put myself out there, I wasn’t scared, I did it, I looked silly doing it, but it didn’t work out and I’m coming on. It’s no reflection on me as a person, as an athlete, as anything. It’s nothing.

It’s an external factor. When you can separate all the things that happened to who you are as a person, and I know this can be hard. A lot of people will wrap up how much money they make, how much income they had, around how worthy they are as a person or how good they are as a business-owner, or I work with a lot of men and a lot of men will wrap up their income in how valuable they are as a husband or as a partner. But when we can just push all that stuff and see who we are inside and see our divine light, who we really are.

We’re not just these bodies and what we speak. Who we are is such a deep, deep level. My belief is we’ve come here a bunch of times. There’s so much wisdom within us that we put our value on these things and if we could really see us in this light, in this powerful, divine light and who we are, and I say that. I’m working on this myself ’cause sometimes I forget how powerful I am, how divine I am. I know from a lot of people that I work with this is something that we need to continue to work on and continue to cultivate that real connection with us and our higher self to realize that all this other stuff, not a big deal.

Failing, not a big deal. Just means that you’re putting yourself out there. You’re doing stuff. You’re moving forward. If it doesn’t work out, okay, why didn’t it work out? What can I do next time to improve this? What didn’t work out that was my doing, my responsibility? What happened that I could have changed? Really taking ownership for it and moving through it. Next! I don’t know anyone who’s made it to a “societal look” of what’s successful who hasn’t failed a ton of times.

I’ll go into success, what success is, and really what success is to me ’cause, again, it’s something that everyone has a different view of. It means something different for everyone. Failure for you does mean something completely different than failure for someone else.

But wrapping this up so it’s not going on forever, when you can see that you are so valuable and so worthy and all that over stuff, whether it works out, whether it doesn’t work out, whether it’s a total flop, it has no meaning on your worth. There’s a word I’m looking for. It’s not coming to me. It doesn’t validate your worth. Whether it works out or it doesn’t work out, it’s not a validation of how worthy you are. If it’s a total flop, it doesn’t mean you’re a total flop. It means whatever it was wasn’t aligned with you at that time or there was something off or you weren’t doing something or you were doing too much.

Whatever. There’s so many things. What it is is something that you can take, evaluate, “Why didn’t it work? What could I have done?” Then just move through it. That’s it. That’s my message for you. When you’re at a good place and you can totally laugh at it and laugh at a failure, and I use, again, failure loosely ’cause what is a failure? I believe it’s just all lessons and learning. When you can laugh at it, then you’re in a good place. Then you have separated yourself from the behavior. Not the behavior.

You’ve separated yourself from the accomplishment or the lack of accomplishment. You’re not relating it back to you as a person, you as your identity. Okay. That’s it. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear any questions. I love to keep the conversation going. Let me know what has been something that you feel that didn’t work out but you were able to learn from it and move through it. Let me know. I would love to hear.

That’s it for today. That’s it for Monday. Have a fabulous week and I’ll talk to you soon. Ciao.