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Failure, Rejection, and the Art of Being Average
Sep 16 2015

Tibetan monks creating a intricate mandala that they will soon wipe away and throw into a nearby river.

Tibetan monks creating an intricate mandala they will soon wipe away to illustrate impermanence. Later they will throw the colored sand into a nearby river and start the process over again.

Life seems to have a lot of rejection, failure, and unmet expectations in between occasions of blissful acceptance, success, peace, and happiness.

But it’s all part of the human experience and according to Pema Chodrin we need to Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning into the Unknown (Amazon link).  I heard about the book from Seth Godin’s blog post Failing, again. It’s a quick, easy read with a nice analogy of how we build resilience, understanding, and acceptance over time as we get better at dealing with the big waves that life sends us that sometimes knock us down. We struggle to get back up only to experience the next big wave trying to knock us down again!  I also recently read her book Practicing Peace in Times of War (Amazon link) and found it insightful.

The Top 5 Stressful Situations (1. Death of a loved one, 2. Divorce, 3. Moving, 4. Major Illness, and 5. Job Loss) can leave us feeling like a failure and/or rejected.   I’ve experienced 4 of those 5 events personally and two of them at the same time. [major stress emoji]  Based on my experience, it takes a great support network, a positive attitude, and not being afraid to ask for help (even if you ask for it in an imperfect way) to navigate these life changes and come out the other end with most of your mental faculties still in tact. 😀 You learn pretty quickly who your friends really are during those tough times. And if you take the time to learn from those experiences, you build resiliency to weather the next big wave and are able to help others get back up too!

Here are some great articles I’ve read recently that can help all of us put feelings of rejection, failure, and lack of confidence into perspective.

On feeling like a failure – Seth Godin

In Defense of Being Average – Mark Manson.  He is such a funny and talented writer!  It is okay to be average, because most of us are.

The Confidence Gap – The Atlantic.  This article discusses the unique challenges even the most talented and accomplished women face on the topic of confidence.

On Marrying the Wrong Person – The Book of Life.  Will the way we pick our spouses evolve yet again? I hope so.  This article discusses how we should pick our mate.  The method they suggest makes more sense than how we humans have typically done so in the last thousands of years.

Mixed Signals: Why People Misunderstand Each Other – The Atlantic.  What did she say? He couldn’t have really meant that, right? OMG, I can’t believe she didn’t understand me!

Author: | Filed under: book review, books, FYI, Just For Fun, random stuff | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

2 Comments on “Failure, Rejection, and the Art of Being Average”

  1. 1 Anthony Rodgers said at 5:14 AM on October 12th, 2015:

    Same happened with me when I was in ear training phase during my music career. I wasn’t getting the hang of it. I had failure and then disappointment. Then I had motivation and I tried again. This time, I was average. Eventually, in years, I was so good at it that even my teacher got fumbled by my performance. Now I regularly keep myself acknowledged about the latest trends in ear training through, Ear Training HQ Blog and
    Ear Training Mastery Blog

  2. 2 Aruni said at 9:34 AM on November 26th, 2015:

    Hi Anthony – I’m glad you kept trying and are being true to yourself and your readers. You can’t fake listening/hearing with your heart for very long. 🙂