Last night, a close friend and I were talking about “failures”.
Namely, our business ventures that flopped big time and how no one seems to talk about them.
You hear of the “big wins” in the media–how someone went from a side hustle to making 100k or about a new technology that’s revolutionizing an industry (or even think of the big successes like Amazon, Facebook, and Apple)
A lot of the people I follow in the online business space rave about their path to “success” (and of course, the success sells, so that’s what they talk about!)
My friend and I were celebrating our business “failures”.
Why?
Because “Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a part of success”
These failures pointed me more closely to other successes in my life:
(Pictured above–my 2009 budding Ecuadorian Scarf business. I brought home 500 scarves in my two suitcases to sell to boutiques)
- Para Ti (an Ecuadorian Scarf business I tried to start)
- The Beautiful Market (A clothing drop ship biz that I invested A LOT of money in)
- Spirveda (An ad agency I tried to start with a former co-worker and friend)
And then there were the ones that involved big money (that didn’t pan out and give me a return on my investment) like a google ad manager and a Facebook ads manager.
Talking about our failures reminded me of the weight loss/diet industry.
We only see the successes.
Our neighbor raves about a “success” she had on some online diet plan.
We get an ad for a new weight loss pill with testimonials of drastic sizes lost.
All around us, we hear the wins and successes.
(Which makes us feel like someone is wrong with US when we “fail” the diet).
The reality is 97% of people who diet regain the weight within 3 years.
That is A LOT of “failure” in an industry that touts success.
In honor of full transparency, here are how many diets I’ve “failed”:
- Weight Watchers (on and off, spent a final 1.5 days on it prior to a move to CO to “lose 5 pounds”)
- Atkins (lasted 3 weeks)
- SlimFast (remember that one? did it on and off in high school)
- Diet pills (kept having to “up my dose” and spent probably thousands of $)
- Hollywood Juice Fast (my sister and I bought this and I did it for 1 day, went to babysit a neighbor and binged for 3 hours)
- Whole30 (didn’t make it the 30 days)
- No carb/no sugar (have tried 100 times to do that over the years)
Multiple that by 10 since I kept going on and off all of them.
If we talked about all our failures more, I wonder if our eyes would open to how hard it actually is to stay on a diet.
You know what our “failures” do though?
They help us see the light…each diet I tried and “failed” at was like a small chip away in the belief that a diet was the solution.
I like to think that every time we find something that DOESN’T work for us, we are closer to finding what DOES work.
And what does work?
Learning how to listen to our OWN bodies.
Learning what way of eating works for us.
Taking care of ourselves emotionally without eating.
Letting go of strict food rules.
Amongst other things.
One of the lessons I’ve learned (over and over…) is that when we fail, when things don’t go according to how we think they “should”, or we feel like we’re banging our head against the wall, there is usually something we need to learn exactly where we are.
Some of my biggest lessons (see the post “6 Biggest Lessons I’ve Learned on this Path” Here) have been when I’ve been so stuck and wanted to give up.
So shining a light on your own “failures” (diet or life related!)…
What is that you can be open to learning?
How can you take wherever you are as a lesson to process so you can move forward?
Can you see what DOESN’T work as a clue to what DOES work?
I’m curious to hear how you can reframe your own “failures” to serve you (rather than us get caught up in the critical mindset that there’s something wrong with us!)
Share below 🙂
