What Important Life Lesson Did I Learn?

The insidious thought came to mind, If you go home now, everyone in the neighborhood will know you failed. Because this was The Age Before Cell Phones, I drove to a quiet park and bawled my eyes out. We don’t leapfrog to triumph. For two hours I would be teaching six real people my favorite life principles and they would pay for the experience. I was taking it personally. Gathering and stuffing and packing my belongings, I trudged out to the car and drove. I finally arrived home, my husband opened the door and said, Where were you? The university called and said there were six people there to take your class. Apparently, the department had given out the wrong class time. That experience of perceived failure taught me a pivotal lesson. I could have laughed. I could brand these experiences as a Loser Woman Moment. I could embrace it as part of the progression path, of the growth and learning that every single person goes through.

I Second That Emotion

We don’t get to skip steps. We have to know where we want to go, and by painful, joyful process, know what it means to arrive. Whatever the experience, failure feels like a lost opportunity, like something that can’t be redone or undone. The future success is part of the current fail. What important life lesson did I learn? How has it strengthened me and my core being? What have I learned that I haven’t learned before/couldn’t have learned without it? What pivotal purpose can I take from this learning? How can I use this learning in the future? Was that experience for a good cause, a community event or function, a school fundraiser, a small business venture when your family needed the financial help? Every experience matters. Every bit of learning builds and strengthens and defines our future success and fulfillment. When we stay focused on where we ultimately want to be, that Pike’s Peak of life’s mountains, we can find deeper purpose in our momentary vistas and rest areas during the climb. I remember reading years ago about a celebrity who had scheduled an ambitious hike up a mountain in Hawaii. About a third of the way up she turned around and saw the breathtaking views. Why am I rushing this beautiful experience? Taking that rest can shift and renew our senses. Failure does that, too. But my soul felt tired before even beginning.

There's No Power In Pity

I knew the energy it would take to start this flywheel again. However, the feeling persisted. We would train leaders and program hosts, we would offer classes of different varieties, we would create training conferences, and more. In short, we alone would solve the world’s problems. To start, we held an introductory class. Although my soul cringed at my prior community education class experience, we forged on. Initially, we had hoped for a modest 15 to 20 women. This must be the answer! We moved forward with our bold, global vision but suddenly, and oddly, just as suddenly the response dried up. In subsequent classes, we had only 20 to 30 women at most. Our first women’s retreat, based on helping women through deep challenges, was ultimately cancelled. Even though our evaluations said the women loved the concepts, our model wasn’t working. Because of that early, confusing failure, I took time to sit and ponder what it was telling me.

A Certain Kind Of Fool

And I realized the failure was a blessing. With a sureness I can’t describe, I knew at that time I was not to foray into those kinds of events, women’s retreats, or a host of the other really great and amazing ideas that we had brainstormed. Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. That failure shift led me to better ways and means. As have other women, through each of my Everyday Fails as well as Big Fails I’ve engaged in beautiful layered learning. The gifts of failure include wisdom and insight that cannot be obtained any other way. We emerge from the cocoon knowing what we want, wriggle in the pupa to recapture the vision of what can and needs to be, and take flight by becoming open to people and possibilities to make it happen. When we see failure as such, we rejoice in its surefire companion of success. Connie’s passion is helping women and families live purposeful, organized, and joyful lives! Often called a woman’s cheerleader, she founded the Back to Basics program to teach women simple principles in eight life areas that get results, such as organization, weight loss, and healthy relationships. Sokol marinates in time spent with her family and eating decadent treats. Want to find out how to make changes in your life? I was standing in the bathroom in a towel after taking a shower one Sunday morning in June 2015, but that didn’t stop me from obeying immediately. When people ask me today why I went to Kenya, my response is peer pressure. It’s true. I had at least 50 other countries on my list to visit before ever setting foot on the continent of Africa, but two of my closest friends at the time convinced me to go with them. I live with a condition called lymphedema that makes me highly susceptible to cellulitis, a deep tissue infection that I have contracted many times in the past 15 years.