krnaturalphoto's Blog 
Feeling Failure
I think one of the biggest challenges in life is that from time to time we all will experience this sense of failure. No matter what we are doing in our lives or how well of we are or how much we are struggling there will be times were we just have this sense of could we really be doing any worse than we are. We will question ourselves. We will wonder if what we are doing is even worth it.
There are so many different facets to life and it is difficult to keep all those things in balance on the best of days. We often times are happy to just keep one ball up in the air let alone all of the balls we are juggling constantly. Sometimes it seems like we are spending our whole lives juggling just trying to keep as many balls in the air as we can, and for what purpose. It can often seem like we aren’t making any progress. Life isn’t getting any better. We aren’t’ reaching our goals. So why oh why are we still trying to juggle all these different balls?
We all have families, friendships, and work lives. We have athletic pursuits and hobbies we enjoy. We have creative dreams we want to realize. We are brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters. We are coworkers, employees, and bosses. We are runners, artists, golfers, writers, and explorers. We don’t have to be trying to invent the next big things or create a unicorn start up or save the world to feel the pressures of failing at life. It is there all the time, ever present. We all have something we aspire to. We want to do the things that we value in our life and we want to do them well. No one wants to feel like they are failing.
Yet, all too often that is exactly how we feel.
One of the hardest things about this feeling of failure is that it often stems from things that are currently beyond our control. There are many things in life that are simply beyond our control. Then there are the things that are more within our purview to control and sometimes we just make mistakes. Sometimes we make decisions that at the time seem perfectly rational and then those decisions come back to bite us later in life, but there is nothing we can do about those things in the here and now.
I think the biggest way to combat this feeling of failure is with acceptance. We have to accept where we are in this moment. We have to accept that it might not be where we ultimately want to be but that is ok. We can only live in the present. We can do the best we can to love the life we are living as we are moving through it. It is not going to be perfect but it is the only life we get.
Once we accept where we are in life and that we cannot change our past we can start to deal with working towards where we want our lives to go. And even that is hard, because it will always feel like that life we always envisioned or dreamed of will never get here. And it’s probably true that the imagined life or the ideal life will never arrive, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying to get one step closer to that life. We can live life for the things we love. We can live life for the imperfections and we can revel in those imperfections and know that all the mistakes we make give us yet another opportunity to do something else in our lives.
Live life and enjoy it. Accept the mistakes and embrace failure. It is all part of life. We are humans and we are if nothing else failable and we will fail over and over again, but that is what life is all about. Failing and learning from it and learning how to live with it and love it and make life better because of it.
Today I was really struggling and feeling like I was failing and feeling like I should just give up the things that I push myself to do, but then what be left of life. I decided to process my feelings through writing this post.
Such a good point! I think it’s so critical to have others around you who you can talk through those failures and have the support to bounce back!