Ep 235 Failing on Purpose

Join me today as I discuss the importance of failing with purpose.  Many high achievers with perfectionistic thinking hold themselves back with fear of failing.  

Instead of going after your dreams many people will stay safe and play small out of fear of failing – ultimately failing in advance.  

I am sharing why we hold these beliefs, how they are not useful for us – or our children.  I am talking about why you need to redefine what failing means in order to accomplish you biggest goals in life.

In This Episode:

• Failing means nothing about you, or your level of worthiness 
• Why we have been programmed to believe failing is bad
• Why it’s important to fail with purpose 
• Living in probability, possibility or potentiality 
• Sara Blakely failing her way to success 

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Episode Transcript:  Transcribed by OtterAI with minimal edits 

You are listening to the it’s your time podcast and I’m your host certified life coach Michelle Arnold Bourque. In today’s episode I’m discussing failing with purpose. Welcome to the it’s your time Podcast, the podcast, we’re busy professionals like you get the practical solutions and support you need to gain control of your schedule. So you can strive to be the best in your career, but without the stress and overwhelm. If you’re looking to increase your energy and decrease your stress, you are in the right place.

Michelle Bourque  0:35 

Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast friends. And if you are new here, we are so happy that you found us. Welcome. I am going to dive right in to today’s podcast episode. And I might be on a bit of a rant. And Mark who edits a podcast might call me to say are you sure you really want to say that? He always has my back? And yes, yes, I do. This is an important topic. And it has come up a couple of times in the past week. And last night, we were watching TV, and they were talking about not giving out F’s as grades anymore. And this is what really fires me up, they said, because they don’t want kids to think they are failures. This is so much of the conditioning, and the work and the and conditioning that I am trying to do here. It is so much of the work and um conditioning that I still do on myself. The letter F on a piece of paper does not equate to a kid feeling like a failure. It is what we all make it mean, that makes us feel a certain way. And I know a joke about the traumatic red ink in school back in the day, I don’t even think they do that anymore. And it wasn’t the freakin ink. Right? It was all of the beliefs around the red ink like I did it wrong, I might get in trouble. I disappointed my teachers, I disappointed my parents stopping giving out EFS does not change the issue. It is not the solution. And you know how I know? Because I also felt like a failure if I gotta be, and I’m sure many of you can relate. And feeling like a failure along those lines came from a simple question. Why wasn’t it an A? And you know, what, if I had the emotional intelligence skills that I have now and continue to build myself, and it’s what I try to teach you here, and I will always teach my clients. And sometimes even the people at work, regardless of if they are signed up for coaching or not, because I do think it is so important is that I would look at that question and not make it mean anything about me. Instead, we can get curious, what could I have done better? What can I learn from it? What actually did work? Here is the point, your worth is not determined by your level of success or failure. For the people on the back, I will say it again. And for anyone thinking that the F on a piece of paper means anything about you. Your worthiness and life is not determined by your level of success or failure. worthiness is you were born now what you are breathing. Now what? Here you are. Now what? And we found ourselves and our kids by teaching them that failing is bad. Failing is not meeting expected results. Failure can be learning. Okay, you didn’t hit your sales numbers. What can you learn from the quarter? In fact, this just came up with my team. I will tell you, the quarter wasn’t looking great. We were entering into the final month. And listen, I have a human brain too. And I found myself in conversations. And you know the one salespeople saying things like, Well, should we just take the hit this quarter and start fresh next? Maybe we should shoot for 91% to plan just to be you know, still respectable and make some money. And then I was like, Wait, what are we doing here? There is still a month left? Why are we talking about failing and advance? And you know why we do it? Listen, we disguise it. And it sounds something like well, let’s be realistic. We see the number of cases and what’s in and I’m not really sure so instead of going all out and maybe missing the number at the end and being disappointed that we didn’t hit instead, we fail and advanced by not trying because we think we won’t be disappointed because it was just you know, quote unquote, the reality of it. Stop that. What in the actual hell is the benefit of it? Instead of being disappointed at the end? I’ll just be Leave that we aren’t going to make it all month and then be disappointed along the way. Know what, there’s no upside. So we keep believing, and we keep going. And we believe in the potentiality of the situation. And you know, there are three different levels that we can work in. And this will actually be an entirely different podcast, because I do think it’s so important, and we can go in depth, but I’ll just give you a basic overview. So you have the level of probability, which is where many folks reside, then there is possibility and listen, I’m using selling as the example because it just came up. But it can also be weight loss, money mindset, going for a promotion, you figure out where you see this in your life, building a business, all of it. So probability could look like, okay, based on the outstanding cases and what we have, and we probably won’t make it. But if XYZ happens, it could be possible that we get a little bit closer. So that’s the difference between probability and possibility. And then living in potentiality, is, I wonder what patients are coming in that I am not even aware of. Or I wonder what could happen with a bulk deal that I might not be thinking of, especially if I’m living in the idea of, we probably won’t make it, there’s a huge difference. When you open up to potentiality. Your brain widens and thinks of different ways to make it happen. There is this energy that you show up with and your energy is everything. If you’re feeling like you’re stuck in life, we need to get moving some of that energy, we need to get changing some of the thinking. We need to not be afraid to fail. You know what else failing does.

Michelle Bourque  6:49 

It keeps us playing small, it keeps us in the background. And what I was just doing my breath work this morning. It’s funny enough, it was on releasing the fear of failure. And this is why I’m so passionate about this topic. I am freaking 49. And still doing this work, right? I want younger people, all people to learn it as soon as possible, so that you go after your dreams. And when I was doing the breath work, I was recalling a time when I was in gym class in high school. And hopefully there’s what do you call that, like, past the time of prosecution because it’s been so many years. You know what I’m talking about, right? Because I think I was a freshman or sophomore. And I hated gym class. I was so afraid to fail, because I was a younger, fat kid and picked on a lot. And in high school, I would borrow one of the football players jerseys. And I would wear these I think they were called heirloom pants. You know, they had like this little fancy thing on the waist. But then the legs almost looked like they were sweatpants anyhow, I would stand in the back. Quiet. Small, didn’t want to stand out wearing my outfit. And once they took attendance, I would slip out the side door. I could take off the jersey and I would just be back to my normal outfit that I had on for the day. Yes, I skipped gym class. I hated it so much. And side note, look at me now. peloton I think we’re on week number 214 of doing something every single day. The point is that gym class is this microcosm of what many of us especially women do in life, we hang out in the back, we stay quiet. We leave the room because we don’t believe that we belong. The answer is not to make EFS go away. The answer is to teach kids and ourselves that it is okay to fail. I mean, my God speaking of gym class, if you lift weights, how do you get stronger, you lift to failure, you break down the muscles to build them up, you get stronger. Can you imagine as a kid as you’re learning to walk, and then you fell down? And you were told, actually, this just came up this weekend? We were teaching my niece how to fail. But can you imagine that you would just look at a kid and say, oh, let’s not try that again. You quite a failure in life you fell down? I mean, no, you were told, Hey, you’re doing a great job. This is what we were telling my niece. Look how strong you are. We’re all cheering her on. You’re doing great. Let’s try again. You keep going right? You encourage the kid we need to encourage ourselves. Side note, she’s a nice it’s a little bit afraid of me perhaps because of my loud crazy energy. So we were saying she might actually learn how to run away from me. It’s so funny. The point is, we know we have to fall down, get up, fall down, get up. And that’s what makes us stronger. Not telling the kid to just freakin crawl for the rest of her life so that she feels successful. It sounds ridiculous, right? I will tell you some of my most recent fails or what is helping me become the person I need to be in order to build my coaching practice. For years, I have told myself, I am a great employee. And that is an identity that I have held tight Lee. And that is an identity. That is not the same as being an entrepreneur, there are new skill sets, I need to learn, there are new characteristics, there are new things I need to try and try again, and they don’t work. And that’s okay. I have a passion to help women in a way that allows you to know how powerful you are, and how you can create your life and do more of what you want. And if I just thought, well, I thought by now I would be making a million dollars a year. And since that’s not happening, I might just be better off going back to what I’m used to, oh, just you know, hang out here, be safe, comfy. It’s a good life. No, that misses the point of what I’m trying to create, who I’m trying to help. And that, again, is failing at advance. We want to fail with purpose. All of this has been discussing different purposes, right? failed to make every attempt to hit that number. You might fail and have quote unquote, cheat days, as you lose weight. The purpose is that you learn along the way, you make changes, and you become that next version of yourself. And the next version isn’t better or worse. It’s just your next best you friends, you fail when you quit. And even then you are still worthy. I want to end here with a quick story that I just love. And you may have heard it. Sara Blakely, you know, the founder of Spanx, named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, named one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes, you know, the woman whose estimated net worth of say is about $1.3 billion. Her dad each night, encouraged her and her brother to share their failures of the day. And she’s quoted as saying, failure for me became not trying versus the outcome. And I would say, with all of her success, perhaps there is something to that mindset. Maybe, maybe instead of telling kids that we aren’t going to give them F’s, we encourage them to try their best to learn to move on and to keep creating the life that they want to live. Knowing every step of the way. No matter what they you, we me, we are all worthy. Okay, that’s what I have for you today. Take what works leave what doesn’t and let’s meet back here next week for another opportunity to transform your life. Make it a great day. Take care

Michelle Bourque  13:02 

Did you know you can take this work to a deeper level with me one on one. Go to www.Michellebourquecoaching.com and click on get started to begin