In my journey of training and working as a professional dancer, the most harried learning curve I had to make it through was that of my fear of failing. It nearly broke me, and many times over.
What I realize today, many years later, is that while I did - thankfully - make it through that particular form of the challenge, everyday, every year, new and different shapes of this same challenge are showing up.
I’m also realizing that, as I am able to see more clearly where and how the fear of failing is still present in my life, the very concept of ‘failure’ is starting to fall away. I’m not sure a more relieving experience exists than this, of gradually understanding that one’s worst fear - or at least one of them - is not even a real possibility but simply a misunderstood distortion of the mind.
Back during my training as a dancer, what was so brutally painful was that I had externalized my sense of what it meant to be a worthy human being so entirely that I experienced it as inextricably linked to the degree to which I ‘performed’. What made this especially hopeless was that ‘performing’ was based solely on how good I thought others thought I was doing, based on the signals I picked up from them - not even their direct feedback.
In other words, my projected interpretation of their evaluation of my performance - was how I was gauging my value as a human being. If that isn’t a convoluted and doomed process I’m not sure what is.
Perhaps you yourself can imagine or relate to the immense pain that inevitably arose from this. Like a sort of straight jacket of disapproval, that feeling like whatever you do it will never come remotely close to ‘good enough’. I remember during the absolute worst of it literally feeling like I could not move my body without collapsing in sorrow (which as a dancer in professional training at the time was even more disastrous).
What I didn’t realize at the time was that what was holding me prisoner with such unkindness was a total disconnection from the only place where true value is actually found - in what IS present. My own harsh judgment of myself and my lack of acceptance of what I was experiencing, my anger at my inabilities and what I brutally judged as my utterly unacceptable short-comings were getting in the way. I was utterly convinced that the only way I could be good enough or worthy was if my external reality was different. It still brings me to tears this many years later to think of the pain that I was in and how stuck I felt - mostly because I know there are many others who either have or are still feeling this way.
But I just didn’t have the wisdom yet. I had been programmed by society that the only way to be or feel love was to be (really) good at something. And I was a serial performer - or at least I tried to b! - out of that ingrained belief first as an athlete, then as a dancer, in academics…
Thankfully over time - with the help of many wonderful and wise human beings, see them mentioned at the end of the article - I too got wiser. And I learned that while excellence or achievement can still be a worthy thing to pursue, when my sense of my own worth or value as a human being is tangled up in it, not only am I on a sure path to misery I am also slowing my learning in/at the very thing I want to get better at. What a f-ing tragic irony!
...but also a lesson I am so deeply grateful to have experienced. I cannot think of a more important lesson than that of truly - albeit painfully - learning to connect to a direct experience of the beauty and enough-ness of this moment - including all of the aspects of ‘myself’ that I might be judging as being less than desirable. A sense of value and worth, not based on what I do or what I achieve but solely out of the fact that I - like you - am one miraculous form of this wondrous thing called life manifesting. How dare I denigrate or shame, based upon some strange idea of ‘failure’, a product (or process perhaps) of 4.1 billion years of miraculous evolution. Holy hell, now that’s just a ridiculous thing to do.
Still, let’s please be clear that I am not arguing that falling short of our goals should be something we settle for. In fact, quite the contrary. What I am actually saying is that it is only when we can be with ourselves, from a place of love and connection to the miracle that you/we inherently are that we have the courage and resources we need to actually claim and move towards our greatest goals.
When we look closely at what is happening when the feeling of ‘failure’ is present. What you will actually find is a judgement of what is present as not enough. Furthermore, if you can breathe and allow yourself to accept what is, and surrender the judgement or evaluation of yourself as having ‘failed’, you will see that all of the information you need to do better or differently next time is actually right there for you in that very moment. The seeds for your next steps are there and as soon as you stop judging them as not being enough they will provide useful to you.
Of course I am still learning to apply this in my own way, every day. But I am so much further than I was those 15 years ago and that is thanks to those teachers in my life who have held this wisdom in their own lives and been generous enough to share it with me. These people are - first and foremost, Doug Duncan & Catherine Pawasarat of Planet Dharma with whom I’ve been working with for all of those years. Additionally, Margie Gillis, Fiona Griffiths, Kavita Singh & Lanie Smith have been there for me in profound, powerful and important ways when it comes to this, as have my parents Barbara Wiktorowcz & Ben Levin. Of course there are hundreds more whom I honour and thank deeply with a grateful nod - you know who you are.
