Despite describing a natural part of what it means to be human, these three words seem to trigger discomfort and shame. How did it happen that we have isolated these experiences and made them unwanted?
Competition. Being competitive has got a bad name, the underlying message is that competitive equals aggressive. But mixed messages are rife, just look around. You need to be bigger, thinner, younger, fitter, happier or just more of this and less of that. We compete at work, home, sometimes with our own spouses, with friends and in our families. Yet, if we are willing to acknowledge and accept that we compete, we can get a better understanding of our capabilities and of what we see as limited in our life (i.e. love, recognition, acceptance and care to name a few). There is nothing wrong with competing as long as seek learning and stay graceful. Competing becomes destructive when we seek to annihilate our opponents and refuse to acknowledge our limitations. Competition can also be a rich source of playfulness and joy.
Failure. This may be one possible outcome of competing. Yet, we are not allowed to fail, ever, because failure takes us to all those dark places where we are unable to separate our actions from who we are. When we fail we feel our badness. Yet, failing and accepting failure can teach us a great deal about ourselves, our failures define us just as well as our successes. Failure can help us stay focused on what matters to us and get a more accurate sense of our capabilities. We can also learn a great deal about humility and self-compassion. There is no way round what makes us human, sometimes we fail to meet our objectives, whether we accept it or not.
Success. Just as we sometimes fail, so can we succeed. Yet, success seems to be another dirty word. So many of us have learnt that if we are too successful something bad might happen to us (not that I know where the cut-off point between successful and too successful is). Well, something bad might happen to us whether we are successful or not. Something good might happen also. Denying ourselves the experience of success only means that we can never know our full potential and we let other people decide for us what is acceptable about us. Of course it also means that we can’t fail.
Accepting failure and success as a natural part of life means that we can be spontaneous in our responses and let in more of life’s richness. It also means that we are not on the receiving end of whatever life throws at us but active participants.
