The fear of failure is a paralyzing reality in our culture. Failure means you’ll be found out, others will realize you’re less than, unworthy, just another waste of life. But what if failure is something that could be confidently pursued. What if instead of running from failure, you ran towards it? Failure is possible, but it’s not what you think. Join me today, let’s learn to risk failure confidently.

Welcome to Your Living Health, the podcast where we talk about real life strategies to reduce chronic inflammation. Each episode will uncover tools for you to lose weight and achieve optimal health. I’m your host, Carly Lucchesi, I’m a UC Davis trained registered dietitian and I’m also a life coach. Together let’s coach through the science of inflammation, but in a way that is simple, purposeful and fun.

You ready? Let’s Go!

Hey there! Welcome back, I’m hoping with each episode you’re gaining new insights that help you identify what may be causing your inflammation, and how you can improve your own health. I’d love to hear your stories or “aha” moments, you can leave them in the comments or email me direct at [email protected]. Today we are going to be talking about failure, because failure is something that is on our mind a lot of the time. Failure is the thing that limits us from taking action, stops us from wanting to try again, and makes taking chances in life a heck of a lot more painful. Or at least that is the story your brain has been telling you all these years. I want to you to right now answer the question, “what does it mean to fail?” Take a minute and really consider this, because every one of us views failure differently. Some might thing of physical accomplishment, like failure means not reaching a certain number on a scale within a certain period of time. Or failure means just simply not achieving a desired result despite your best efforts. Others may view failure as more of a feeling, for example meeting your weight goal, but not having the positive change to your life like you anticipated. Some of you might view failure as an external thing outside your control, where someone’s opinion of your achievement means everything. Say you met your weight goal, but you don’t receive the compliments or approval from loved ones like you expected, and suddenly that goal isn’t good enough anymore. Failure can mean many things to many people, and that is why I want to dig into the concept of failure a little deeper.

The primary definition of failure is the omission of occurrence or performance. Further down there is “a fracturing or giving way under stress” and “a lack of success or falling short”, but I want to focus our attention on the primary definition of failure which is… The omission of occurrence or performance. Notice that failure is MORE about lack of action then it is about the results achieved. Let that sink in for a second. So often we attribute failure to not achieving a desired result, but the fascinating is that when you look at what failure is, it doesn’t even mention results in the primary definition. If failure is more about LACK OF ACTION, aren’t most of you already living your worst case scenario? Paralyzed and unable to pursue a goal or dream simply because of the fear of failure? Just notice the tricks our brain is able to play when left un-parented. Your brain is subconsciously protecting you from failure by causing you to fail ahead of time. How crazy is this!! But in addition to failing ahead of time, your brain is also working subconsciously to protect you from something so much scarier… emotions. Shame. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Guilt. Regret. Fear. Nervousness. By fearing failure, your brain is protecting you from the potential of emotional discomfort.

Ok, so we know that true failure occurs simply by not taking action. And we also know that your brain keeps you fearing failure to protect you from the possibility of future emotional discomfort. Perfect… now this leads us to ask some more high quality questions to uncover what’s another layer deeper. When you perceive that you have failed at something, WHAT are you making this failure mean about YOU? What is the internal dialogue when you set out to achieve something, and don’t quite meet the expectations of yourself or others? Have you ever listened to the words your brain comes up with? What do they sound like? Let’s say you set a goal to eat 100% within your food protocol for the week. Tuesday comes, cookies present themselves, and you find yourself indulging in one after a particularly stressful day at work. In this situation, what is your brain saying… about you? Maybe thoughts like “I knew you couldn’t do it” “Here we go again” “You’re such an idiot” “You’re so weak… it’s only Tuesday and you already failed” When you blindly believe stories like these that your brain comes up with, the perception of failure can turn into an awful experience. It’s no wonder you don’t want to take action!! You know the terrible beat down session you have with yourself if you don’t get EXACTLY what you set out to achieve. Is this resonating with any of you? So where do we go from here?

I want each of you to go with me somewhere, and I want you to open yourself up to a possibility you maybe never considered before. What if everything you’ve made failure out to be until this point, was all just illusion. What if “failure” is 100% optional. What if it’s all made up anyway. Goals, success, failure… All of it. All story. What if you had the option to make falling short of a goal mean something completely different? Right now, the story you’re choosing to tell IS NOT serving you very well. Berating yourself, feeling awful, being scared to take chances in the future… all not super useful. And remember, this is all just optional story you are choosing to believe. What if you took time to shine light on what you’re making failure currently mean, and then asking yourself what you want failure to mean in the future? Do you even want to use the word failure? Do you want to instead say that you fell short of a goal? And if you fell short of a goal, what do you want this to mean about you? If you know you put your 100% action into achieving a goal, and you missed the mark, what does this mean about you? YOU CHOOSE YOUR OWN STORY! But me personally, I choose to tell myself what a badass I am for putting myself out there. I choose to tell myself kudos for aiming for a goal so high that despite my best efforts I couldn’t quite reach it. I choose to look at the person I’ve become in the process of trying to reach this goal, and admire how far I’ve pushed myself. I choose to make missing a goal mean ABSOLUTELY nothing negative about me because I want to have my back and continue rooting for myself to take chances in the future.

But don’t misquote me either… If I know I didn’t give something my 100%, and because of the lack of effort I don’t quite reach a goal, this is pain that I will definitely allow. I will allow thoughts like “you could have done better” to be there. I want the disappointment, because that story will serve me in my future. That story may be the kick in the butt I need when things get tough. But the story I refuse to believe is the story of me being less of a person because of a result I didn’t achieve. I will never believe lies about my worthiness and potential because of a missed goal. Those stories only seek to tear me down, and there is simply no upside to doing that.

I want to (really quick) go over a practical example. Let’s change it up and use a work example where people are relying on you to get something done. Let’s say you are asked to finish a project by 4:00 on Friday. You work diligently towards the goal every day this week. You showed up on time, stayed until the end of your shift, and did well with time management. There were a few times when you found yourself distracted or putting out other fires that seemed more urgent, but every chance you got you were plugging away at this project. But come 4:00 on Friday, this project was not quite done. It needed another 6 hours of your time. This is the point where you are presented with an opportunity. You could easily believe that you have failed. Your brain will begin coming up with stories of how it perceives what is happening. You can believe that you failed, that you should have gotten the project done, and that you let everyone down. That is 100% a thought you could go with. But I want you to ask yourself… how does this story feel? Does this story serve you, or will it instead hold you back? For some of you, letting others down is the emotion you use to drive you to never do that again. But for others of you, that emotion of let down spins you into a spiral of shame, guilt and disappointment. For those of you that tend to spiral when things don’t go as planned, what other story may be equally true, and serve you 100% more? What if the dialogue sounded more like “Hey love, I noticed we missed the mark this week. I wonder where we can clean up our day to be more productive? Let’s do what we know we can do, and knock it out of the park next week”

Failure is NOT when you decide midway through to pursue a different direction. But failure IS when you silently give up, and choose to stop trying without having that conversation with yourself.

If failure is just a story you make up, why not make this story a productive one? Why not intentionally create a reality that builds you up instead of leaves you spinning in shame? Today I want you to notice the stories your brain offers up when you miss the mark. I want you to notice the stories your brain offers up when you have a dream or goal that is something new, challenging and exciting. I want you to hold your brain captive to the lie of potential failure it whispers in your ear. Decide to courageously respond, “not today brain”. If you are a human, you are going to fall short. You are going to miss the mark when you do new things. You are going to miss the mark when you aim for the stars. But the only time you actually fail is when you give up, or when you don’t even have the courage to take action. The only time you fail is when you believe the lie that you falling short of a goal makes you less worthy, less of a person. You are an amazing badass, capable of pursuing and achieving greatness. Today is the day to start, because you know that failure isn’t even a possibility if you just keep going.

If this has been helpful to you in any way, I ask that you leave me a review so that others can have easier access to this information. For those who have comments or ideas for future episodes, please take a few minutes now and type them out, I promise to read every single one. If you’re looking for some 1:1 guidance, head over to yourlivinghealth.com and book your free introductory consult. Again, thanks for your support of this podcast and I’ll talk to you soon.