What was I thinking?

There are many stages in life where one falls flat on his face. For me, it was falling flat my face then off a cliff into a pool of lava with a boulder landing on top of me. After I let the bumps, bruises and burns somewhat heal, I got right back on track. Well, at least I thought I did. Unfortunately, I really did not take stock with respect to what was hapenning. I was so determined to correct this failure, I never really looked at the emotional impact of this failure. I was told to have a stiff upper lip and commence on with the matter at hand. In retrospect, that was a bad idea.

So now with my second attempt, I believe I failed again. Now what have I learned from this second failure. First, the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Actually, I am probably not there yet. If I do this a third time without changing my method, then I would fall under the defintion. In reality, what I learned was I was trying to achieve something that was purely based on building my self-esteem. I believed wrongly that the success of this would validate me as a person and an expert in my profession. But, that was wrong. Because self-esteem works well things are going great; however, it is no where to be found when things go wrong. It is that casual friend that this there for the party, but is gone when it is time to clean up.

Now, I have learned what I really need is self-compassion. I now ackowledge that we all make mistakes, which is ok. It is part of the human DNA. Failure is a good thing. I might not feel that way at the time, but with time, it is. So I am working on self-compassion, being more compasionate to myself. I have realized all this time that I have been my worse enemy. Sure there are other people around who accentuate my failures for their own pleasures, but I cannot control them. I can, however, control myself. I am working on being more self-compassionate. By doing this, I am not only helping myself, but the people around me. Because once you can be compassionate to yourself, it is easier to be compensionate to others.

This will be a daily struggle and I will have set backs, but I believe I can get through this one day at a time. In the end, I will be in a better place to handle any failure or success.