Celebrate your Failures
I celebrate my failures, like when I hurt my hip doing the swan pose. And my neck is bad from Covid (seriously, trust me, I used to be an infectious diseases doctor).
Most recently, I hurt my knee doing child’s pose. I think it was my meniscus because of a small week-long effusion. Just tonight, a loving-kindness meditation fixed a kickboxing hamstring injury.
These are all failures of my physical body. What if I viewed them as failures of me personally? What if I view my injuries as failure?
Are Injuries Personal Failure?
What if I view my injuries as failures? After all, I hurt myself in poses named after children and swans. What does that tell you about my ability to let go and be in my body?
And Covid stung me bad both physically (the original Omicron hit me like a spear into my left infra scapular nerve right through my subscapularis muscle and has left me with chronic neck and shoulder pain for the last two years) and mentally. How would you like to be an infectious diseases doctor during the Covid pandemic? It felt like quicksand to truth, connection, honesty, and trust in our politicians. And life in general.
Don’t take your physical injuries personally. Don’t take the world, news, politics, and everything else spun to attract your eyeballs rather than help you be a better person personally. These injuries are not your personal failure.
Did I mention kickboxing? It is fun to be in better shape than my children. It took a lot of time, heart, soul, and injury (failure) to be able to outrun them through the nature trail. Eventually, they will beat me. Having kids is a tug-of-war; eventually let go the rope and they fly or fall on their butts. Success is being the not unhealthy parent.
I’m 50 in two months, and I kickbox twice a week, do yoga, and meditate frequently (especially right before I go to sleep). Initially, I intermittent fasted and hiked my way from 250 to 180lbs, and I have enough mixed-grey hair I’m considering Just For Men. I got grey hair during med school and residency, but that’s a different story.
Instead of viewing injuries as failures, why not celebrate progress?
Celebrate Progress
Celebrate progress. Fail at something hard. A path to enduring happiness is celebrating progress because you failed and hurt yourself trying something hard. Like kickboxing. When you are in the arena, you are dealing with people who also celebrate progress and failing and hurting and getting back in the arena.
In the arena, like in kickboxing, half the time it is enough to show up. Expect rare progress. There are days when I push it hard and celebrate success. And there are days where I hurt, too. And fail. I fail at hard things and celebrate progress.
Just by showing up, growth compounds. Say yes and do something hard. Push hard, and most importantly, celebrate every time you show up.
Celebrate after 50 minutes of kickboxing or 5 minutes of meditation.
Here are some steps to celebrate your progress:
Intention
Sometimes, step back in your life and set an intention.
When you do yoga, the intention is to connect with joy that you have a body and breath is life, and when you do kickboxing, do something hard because you are scared of doing hard things.
Tonight, I failed a loving-kindness meditation that was transformative just last week. Oh well, may you find love, may you find health, may you find joy.
Celebrate your progress by pausing in gratitude to see your recent accomplishments. Today, this week, or quarter. You’ve done something wonderful. What intention did you set? Or, it’s okay to look back and see what you intended by that success. Just like what did you intend by that failure? Why did you have to do that? Why did you want to succeed in that aspect of your life? And why did you want to fail? Remember, you are the one that chose it.
Congratulate Yourself
Celebrate yourself! Celebrate success through self-care. You deserve everything considered “spoiling yourself” in the 80s because that is how you celebrate large and small successes. Do self-care.
Self-affirming. What is wrong with caring for yourself so you can care for others? Congratulate yourself and celebrate yourself by taking care of yourself.
Celebrate failures by saying, “If I were going to be really kind to myself right now, what would I do?” Watch the negative inner dialogue. Feel the resistance. That is your work.
Novelty
A once-in-a-century pandemic is new. It hurt me physically (a chiropractor wanted to dry needle me, and an osteopath has adjustments every single time). Still, it made me quiet quit medicine and violently quit my life of 48 years. I retired and went from infectious diseases physician to full-time stay-at-home single dad. I thought I was burnt out; it turns out it was emotional abuse.
I’m celebrating the failure of my first 48 years of life by accepting it and forgiving myself. And now I get to celebrate that I really have my whole life ahead of me! Novelty is creating your reality all the time.
Failure is Part of Success
The growth mindset requires innocence. Failure is part of success, and each failure requires you to grow. Take the time to learn from the failure (don’t do karate kid jump kicks on your second day of kickboxing, or don’t do child pose when it will, for some reason or another, irritate your meniscus) and free yourself from blame.
Be innocent. You only fail when you quit. It’s fine to quit, but stop quitting the hard stuff and push, fail, hurt, progress, and celebrate that progress.
Celebrate progress. Failure is part of progress. Failure is part of success.
Celebrate Your Failures
All of these failures of my body. What if I took them personally? I admit that Covid kicked my ass physically, professionally, and spiritually and that I keep hurting myself exercising.
Still, I turn 50 later this year; I’m in the best shape of my life. If I can, I try to make an intention for everything I do, and if I succeed or fail, I try to understand the story I’m telling myself about that intention.
Failure is like when I hurt my hip from the swan pose, my neck from Covid, my knee from child pose, and my hamstring from kickboxing. Despite the failure, I’m doing better than I ever have before.
Sometimes because of failures, I can celebrate success.
