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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Is a past failure holding you back from being resilient? Kelly offers two valuable ways of viewing failure.
Hi, it's Kelly Boys here.
I've been asked to answer the question:
how do I bounce back from failure?
I'm really grateful for this question
and I can definitely relate to it.
This is one key area I've seen
clients and students really get stuck.
And I want to share two pointers that
have helped me and I've also seen
help others with this question around
how to bounce back from failure.
They center around mindful self-awareness
something that people who don't
acknowledge failure typically lack.
The first pointer I'd like to
offer is to develop the capacity
to look at your own shame.
Brené Brown has some amazing
work out there on shame, so
you can check her work out.
But my share here is that
typically when we fail, we have
a reaction that we can't see.
So it seems really real to us
through our own confirmation bias
that we have, that we don't take the
time to question the lens through
which we're looking at our failure.
And often that lens is shame, especially
if a failure has happened in front
of our family or our colleagues.
It's such a natural human nervous system
type of response that is to feel shame.
And we don't want to get
kicked out of our community.
So we can feel shame as
we're seenin our failure.
And if we don't look at our own shame and
work to acknowledge it, it trips us up,
it keeps us stuck in loops and sets us
up to fail again in ways that do hurt us.
So how do we do this?
One way is to acknowledge is this
is a typical reaction when we fail.
And we use a simple mindfulness tool of
naming what is present like, wow, I feel
shame, and this is natural and I'm going
to reach out and talk to someone about it.
Another tactic is, wow.
I feel shame.
And if this shame weren't here, what I
would be feeling instead would be....
It's kind of an exploration of a way
not to get overloaded with shame.
The second pointer is to find out
your own version of defensiveness.
We all have one.
So how do you actually see
your own defensiveness?
That is one of the things
that is so hard and.
Why it's so important to build mindful
self-awareness and here's how you do it.
You just watch yourself.
And you see that when you fail, maybe
you lash out and blame others, or
you move that inward and you do a
lot of kind of negative self-talk.
Like, you know, lashing out
basically towards yourself.
Maybe you actually ignore your failure
and you act like it didn't happen.
It's one of those things as
a kid, you're like, if you
can't see me, I can't see you.
If I can't see the
failure, nobody else will.
It doesn't work like that though.
Um, perhaps your style is that you
just get anxious and this freezes
you from moving forward in your life
and bouncing back from the failure.
I think of someone I know who
went on an online date and for
her, it was a total failure.
She decided actually to stop all online
dating as a result of one experience.
That's an example of, it's
kind of a lack of resilience.
She couldn't look at her own shame
that came up and defensiveness and sort
through it, being able to make meaning
and find growth through the challenge.
And that's okay.
And of course, maybe for some
people, the appropriate action
would be to stop online dating.
There's no formula on
this, but check yourself.
How might you be, in your
own way, when you're wanting
to bounce back from failure?
If you understand your particular
defense, such as you know, well,
I usually move to blame others.
Then you can bounce back from your failure
because you know that that's a pattern
for you and you can take a look inwardly,
realistically taking responsibility for
your part and placing responsibility
elsewhere as it happens, but from a
place of understanding and compassion.
The key thing I've seen in all
my work, you know, at the UN,
at Google, other places, is that
when people cannot acknowledge
their failure, they cannot grow.
The two things are intricately
linked, and it's usually shame
or it's close brother pride.
So the trick is not to be paralyzed by
your failure when you do acknowledge it.
We all fail.
I love this story.
One man on his deathbed, when asked
why his grandson what he learned
in life, he exclaimed, I know a
thousand ways it does not work.
How would that be to encounter
failures as ways that are helping
us know what doesn't work, which in
turn, help us know what does work.
You know, as if we are these sort
of neutral learning algorithms.
We have to take the personalness out
of it and the shame and defense that
can arise to help keep ourselves safe
that are no longer working for us.
I once saw a teacher work with an
older man who had been paralyzed by
'if you're a failure' his whole life.
And this had kept him from doing any of
the creative projects he wanted to do.
The teacher looked at him in front
of a hundred people and he basically
said, 'Can you go all the way with it?
Be a total failure.
Get up here and announced to
us what a failure you are.'
And the man came up to the front of
the room, took the microphone and
he exclaimed, 'I'm a total failure!'
And it was really his biggest
fear in life and in owning it, it
gave this tremendous liberation.
He started laughing as hard out and
we laughed along with him because
the freedom he was experiencing from
the fear of it was really palpable.
And you could tell he felt free
from it for the first time in his
life, by going directly into it.
So I imagine that that man then
could bounce back more quickly from
his future failures that were going
to happen because we all fail.
For me, I see failure as an interesting
thing in my life, and it's not
pleasant most of the time, but it
always helps me grow and learn.
And I've learned that along the way.
And this only happens when
I'm out of my own way, though.
I hope this hack can help you go
a long way and bouncing back from
failure, taking a look at your own
shame, defensiveness, meeting them
mindfully, and then looking at how you
can actually grow from the experience.
Thank you for your practice.
And I wish you well as you work with
becoming more aware of shame and
defensiveness in your life as a way of
bouncing back more quickly from failure.
And remember today, to be gentle, to
see the beauty around you, and most
importantly, be kind to yourself.
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