We’re Wired To Succeed
Why are we so concerned with failing? It’s endemic how paralyzed we’ve become because of this fear. And what is it that we’re afraid of? Looking bad? Not measuring up? Falling to the bottom? Even as I write this I am frustrated with myself over a perceived failure. I am not old enough to remove myself from caring what others think of me, yet I am too old to stay in the ever-evolving social media loop. I am teetering in this no man’s land between caring and not caring about failure. Social media is not helping me feel successful.
I am not blaming social media. I am merely pointing out that living in an age when social media dominates our psyches and contributes to feeling inadequate, we want to blame. This is not about our propensity to blame, but our propensity to stay in the story. The world will move with or without me. I am but a speck of dust, as they say, but this speck of dust has something to contribute. After all, if she didn’t she wouldn’t be here. Can a speck of dust blowing in the wind without a care in the world be a contributor on this planet? Of course. Can a speck of dust jammed down into the car seat forever lost and hidden become a contributor? Absolutely! I marvel at how little we think of ourselves, myself included when we’re frustrated by what is seemingly out of our control.
When I think of failure I think about being hidden. I think about not being seen for who I am. I think about staying jammed down into the car seat of my psyche and not ever finding my way to the surface. You see, the surface looks promising. After all, it is the surface where one can be seen, heard, and a part of something universally appealing. We crave the surface, the top, the light, the way out of grief. And we think we have found the top when we have succeeded in bringing attention to ourselves. Our minds know the trap, right, but then why are we giving social media such bandwidth in our psyches?
The mind enjoys delineating between success and failure, but if we could just stop creating delineation, the idea of success could not be measured against the idea of failure.
We like our stories to have a definition and an outcome because we’re designed to operate in the story of duality. To get to the top one has to climb up from the bottom. But to operate without so much entanglement in our lives, and in our minds, I do believe we have to find a way forward out of the mess of duality. And just why am I so frustrated today? I can’t navigate social media without the push/pull of competition. How am I doing in relation to yesterday? In relation to another? My mind knows not to go there, but when the mind and the heart contradict one another, the mind wins. Every time!
Let’s stop making defining proposals that success is one and failure is another.
I am not a failure just because I am tangled up in the emotion of failing. I am, after all, quite savvy when it comes to many things. I am a consistent, reliable, heart-opening individual who just happens not to understand the full complexity of a social media algorithm. I will not look at myself as failing one thing and succeeding at another because that will split me up into a negative and a positive. And rather than see myself as a this or a that, I’d prefer to find a way out of the story of duality, of what I’m capable of or what I’m not, and focus on what IS.
I can do one thing and I can’t, at this moment, do another. This is not an either/or statement. It is a proclamation of truth. Acknowledging that I can write a book, design a cover, and create a platform for promoting it and that I can’t, at this moment, create an engaging social media platform that brings me success, makes me me. And I succeed at being me. After all, it’s what I am.
Success isn’t the opposite of failure and failure is not a limitation. It’s a part of what we experience on a planet of duality. It’s up to me, my mind, not to continue to step into the either/or, Earth’s pattern, and learn how to just BE. I am a this and I am a that. I am a success. I might get tangled in negative feelings and think that I have failed, who doesn't, but these tangles don't define me unless I put myself into a definition.
There are solutions and solutions to solutions. My presence on social media isn’t about me putting myself up against anyone else. It isn’t about comparison or competition, yet the mind wants to go to the story of success versus failure. This is what the mind knows. Is it possible that the mind can recalibrate and become the sum of its separated parts? If the mind can delineate and separate success from failure, can the mind accumulate the tangled wires and reposition them giving us insight into what we are? We’re separating ourselves into good or bad, happy or sad when maybe it’s time to acknowledge that we are All. We are the jumbled emotions because this is how we see ourselves. Only when we stop delineating and separating will we understand the power of duality on our wounded psyches.
Being both frustrated and content, successful yet failing isn’t about being good or bad. That’s a conceptualization.
Finding balance with emotion is difficult, but it can be done when we turn off the idea that we’re not an either/or. Using the planet’s energy as a rudder, this idea of hot or cold, in or out, up or down, has been our go-to. Perhaps it is time to step away from the conceptualization of being here and become the sum of our parts. Earth has more to offer than her duality. She has us. She has minds that recalibrate and desire equilibrium.
