Sitting With Failure Before We Mine the Gold
This post adds to the idea that failure is data, and that we’re not behind – we’re “sitting on a goldmine” of experience and data. I love the invitation to see failure as data and opportunity – yet I also want to linger with what it feels like when failure occurs, as sometimes we get stuck in the overwhelming emotions that often accompany it.
I agree with the sentiments: failures give us chances to try things in the world. We only learn to adjust and realign by getting things wrong.
However, productivity systems and the “you can do this!” culture often push us straight into blueprints or “simple steps” to unlock and capitalise on failures, encouraging us to move forwards with haste. In the therapy room, I notice another step is needed first.
That step is to recognise, hold, and feel the emotional cost of our failures. This isn’t to wallow in a murky emotional swamp – it’s unpacking how it felt, what it means, and which part of us is hurt, so we can move forwards more integrated and stronger.
From my experience as a therapist and in life, it’s only through feeling these feelings that I and my clients have moved onwards in a deeper, more integrated way of being.
Failure often feels heavy and brings with it thick shame, grief for missed opportunities, and crippling self‑doubt.
While we are told failures are an opportunity we can capitalise on, this often pokes old wounds: “I have all this potential, yet I keep failing. Why?” If unacknowledged, failure lingers as background anxiety, flatness, or numbness – robbing joy from our everyday lives.
Spend a Moment With Your Failure
So I invite you to pause and spend a moment with the part of you that feels like a failure, or has failed in your task.
Where is it in your body? In your stomach? Chest tightness? Does it have a temperature or age? Does this tap into old school wounds – trying hard but falling short of expectations?
Exploration in this way isn’t wallowing; it’s honest recognition for the hurt part of us. By pausing to notice how it sits in the body and what it evokes, we care for that part. At this point, the failure’s information – practical and emotional – becomes understandable and, in time, navigable.
The Bravest Step First
Sometimes the bravest step isn’t optimism. It’s feeling how painful it’s been to keep trying and failing. Instead of “act now or waste more time,” stay with the part that feels it’s lost its chance – recognising how hard you’ve worked.
From that gentler place, reconnect with yourself and ask:
“What can I learn?”
“What’s one tiny step?”
We aren’t aiming for big actions. Instead, maybe start small: sharing your experiences with a friend, telling someone your ideas, writing advice to your hurt part (and letting it reply), or admitting: “I care, but I can’t enact it yet.”
In therapy, we make space for shame, grief, and self‑doubt around failures before strategy – because it’s important to take time to recharge, rest, and recognise our internal world before we move forwards.
You’re Not Alone in This
If you’re feeling left behind or that you’ve failed, you’re not alone. These feelings are hard and can be incredibly paralysing if ignored. But empathetically exploring them – with a pen, friend, or therapist – lightens them, letting us mine the data and move forwards stronger.
We start off wired for failure as learning . Have had the pleasure of watching lots of little humans taking their first wobbly steps . They fall down but they get up again - and again and again , adjusting and learning and progressing quickly to running , jumping and climbing . We once knew failure was learning and thrived
This! This for me was the most important lesson. I understood this reading somewhere that the feelings want a witness, and you can be your own witness. Just as you would sit with an upset friend, just holding their hand, you can sit with your self, and hold yourself. This image of being a witness helped me understand the process and to have patience and compassion with myself. It made it less daunting somehow. I would add that sometimes the pain is so big, that you have to do that thing for yourself that we do for otthers where you say, I can listen, but can I do the dishes at the smae tome? Or can we go for a walk? Meaning, sometimes you have to ease into the “being with”. Yoga nidra for me was a good way to understand the staying on a somatic level. Thanks Matt!