Learning from Failure

Have you ever experienced failure? 

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

Joseph Campbell

A couple of days ago I went on a walk with my husband. The sun was about to set, and we were talking about upcoming projects, dreams we have for our near future, and about the footwork for getting there. We weren’t at all discussing our careers, but as we set foot on the uphill street that ends in a breathtaking view, in our neighborhood, I shared with him an uncomfortable truth that I had kept hidden for a long time. I had admitted this truth to myself already, silently and covered in shame. But I had never talked about it with another human being.

I believe that it is by voicing our fears and negative thoughts that we take their power away. It is by sharing, that we can move forward. So I am writing about this because what I told my husband during a walk in our neighborhood, when the sun was about to set, as we walked on an uphill street, will hopefully resonate with many of you out there, if you have ever experienced failure in your life. Because it is by failing that we are granted a chance for success – a chance for learning and inner growth.

In a recent article in the NYT, The Art of Failing Upward, Kate Losse writes: “Telling the story of what went wrong is a way to wring insight from failure.” This led me to think about my own failures, and how I could perhaps see them in a different light.

“I never said this to anybody, ” I told my husband. I knew he would not judge me.

“I’ve always believed that having to close the boutique after only one year of business was a punishment from God.” In fact, I had opened an interior design luxury boutique in the small mountain town in Italy, where I lived before moving to the United States. And I truly believed that God was punishing me again, when only a handful of people showed interest in my novel, and not even my own publisher seemed to me very interested in promoting the book.

I was devastated when both endeavors failed, when they didn’t yield the results I had hoped for. They both caused me a considerable loss of money and self-esteem, and they both caused me to judge myself harshly, more than I would ever judge another person.

When the boutique closed I wasn’t sober. So what I did was drink and use more; I tried to forget, and I tried to not feel the disappointment and the shame. I saddled myself with the blame for not having chosen the right time (2009 when the international financial crisis peaked), for not having chosen the right location, and for not carrying out the preliminary market-research as a good businesswoman would have done. But I wasn’t a businesswoman; I was an inexperienced 26-year old.

Then, of course, I blamed people. I blamed the local administration for not supporting my business, the local papers for ignoring how innovative my ideas were, and I blamed the customers, for passing me by and seldom walking in. I felt ignored, and I didn’t consider where the idea for the store had originated. I stood too distant from my center – what I call in my new book my emotional real estate. So I wasn’t able to ask myself if owning my own interior design boutique in a small Alpine town was my calling – what I truly wanted to do with my life.

In 2015 I published my first novel, The Sex Girl. I thought that my life had finally taken the right turn. “I’m following my bliss,” I said and wrote many times.

But when the book was ignored by the media, even though I had hired a publicist, I gave in to the familiar feeling of failure and unfairness that a few years earlier had taken me down.

In all honesty, nothing related to the book quite worked from the beginning; I didn’t listen to my gut and I ignored what I now see as questionable behaviors, misunderstandings never really clarified, and so on.

I kept going nonetheless, for fear of what taking a (wise) step back would cause. And I failed.

So what was left for me to do – I thought – was concentrate on the failure that had followed the book release. I blamed myself for not writing well enough, I resented those who I thought had ignored and abandoned me, and I just could not understand why my words didn’t resonate with people.

But as I focused on yet another failure I struggled to admit that – whilst important and honest – The Sex Girl wasn’t written in quite my own voice, but in emulation of somebody else’s. The voice I used aimed at impressing; it aimed at being accepted, and it was pointed in the wrong direction.

As a consequence, I promised myself that I would never write again.

During both these endeavors, that I did pursue with passion and care, I wanted to impress people, I craved the love and the admiration of men I thought I loved, and I wanted to feel special.

The Sex Girl wasn’t the original title; I wanted to call the novel Beyond The River. The story would have taken on a different tone and a different feel, if only I had trusted myself and not bought into the false idea that, in imitating others and denying my true self, I would finally be loved, admired, accepted, and acknowledged.

Today I have the blessing of having married the man I truly love, and of having written a new book, in my own voice. I don’t care as much whether my voice is good enough, because it is mine, and that’s what matters. Today I am blessed with a feeling of accomplishment when I write; I am thrilled about it.

Today I know that God wasn’t at all punishing me. Because the two endeavors that failed held within a lesson that I had to learn.

“If you really want it,” a dear friend of mine told me the other day, referring to a dream I have, “God will grant it to you, one way or another.” And I believe that too; it is such a belief that keeps me moving forward. It is this sense of faith that helps me do the footwork until the time to turn it over approaches.

I shared the truth with my husband because, for the first time, my heart felt genuine. I wasn’t a bad person in the past, when I wrote The Sex Girl, or opened the boutique; I was doing the best I could at the time, and I believed in them both with all of my heart. 

But today I am present in my life; I don’t have to force its happening. It doesn’t mean that I always get what I want, but I get the tools to deal with what life gives me. And it isn’t always easy or pleasant.

Acceptance is the answer, I read every day in a very wise book. And we ought to accept, if we want to turn failure around. I tried the other way, the fight, and it didn’t work.