Getting Rid of Failure

There’s something about the word “failure.”

It looks sad. It looks depressing. It literally reeks of the smell of…well…failure.

The mind is a marvelous thing. Although I would contend it is unitary, we can define that aspect of the mind that takes care of everything we’re not aware of as the unconscious. This unconscious does a lot of things. It controls our balance. It keeps the heart going. And wow, does it remember things! Even things you are not consciously aware of, it remembers. And it acts on them.

And it’s powerful! If you think you are a success, it will help you achieve success. But if you think you’re a failure, your will sabotage your actions and lead you to wrong decisions. It will lead you to failure. And with each failure it will acknowledge that, indeed, you’re a failure, and work hard to keep you a failure.

I wonder how many lives have been ruined because a parent told a child, “You’re such a failure.” Perhaps the child, now grown, doesn’t consciously remember it. But the unconscious does. And it acts.

I hate failure. I really do. But for some time, now, I have been “programming” my unconscious with a simple concept:

There is no failure, only feedback.

Sure, sometimes things don’t work as planned. Sometimes they don’t work as desired. But I refuse to accept these things as failures because I am not a failure! Since I am not a failure, there is no way I can fail. “Failure is not an option” for me. I am not a failure.

But when something doesn’t work, doesn’t that mean I failed? No!

I am not a failure. What I do does not fail. When something doesn’t work as I wanted it means that I did not have enough information to plan and act appropriately to achieve my desired results. Things that don’t work are simply additional feedback. They provide lots of information for me so that next time I’ll achieve the goal I wanted. The lack of success is a blessing because it gives me more information to plan, act, and achieve my potential.

Sometimes magick rituals don’t work. The protection isn’t there. The healing doesn’t heal. The talisman doesn’t achieve its goal. The spirit evoked doesn’t appear.

Not one of these is a failure! Not one of them. Each lack of success gives me the opportunity to learn more about magick in general and more about the specific ritual, rite, spell, or practice. Is that a great opening to greater success or what?

So I may not succeed this time or the next time. But each time I don’t succeed I can take that feedback from the experience and learn. Eventually, I’ll be successful because I am a success.

How about you? Are you programming yourself for success or failure?

I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
……………………………………………….—Benjamin Franklin

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
………………………………………………—Charles F. Kettering (inventor of the electric starter)

Failure is success if we learn from it.
………………………………………………—Malcome S. Forbes