"If you've never failed, you've never tried anything new."

I've made a real effort the past couple of days to do more of my "should-dos", and it's gone pretty well. I've even gone out on a limb a couple of times and tried to do the opposite of what I normally do. This is a rare course of action for me since leaving my comfort zone inevitably makes me feel vulnerable. And when I'm feeling vulnerable, my deep-seeded fear of failure makes itself known. Mostly I fear doing something wrong. Ridiculous, I know, since I do things wrong all the freakin' time. Still, I have a knack for chastising myself whenever I think I've screwed up.

Today, I rolled out my mat after my Tuesday had gone from good to really frustrating. Since I knew my motivation wasn't on top, I decided to play my teacher's DVD for the first time. I was even going to do the sequence that I had learned during my advanced teacher training, but have since avoided like the plague for fear of having to acknowledge that my body wouldn't be capable of assuming various positions. Turns out I was right. Whether it's because my arms are too short, my hips are too stiff, and/or my waist that is voluminous, I just couldn't bind myself in most of this program's forward folds. But instead of feeling defeated, I felt OK. To be honest, it hadn't gone as badly as I feared. There were even some moves that I was surprised I was able to do. And for once, I didn't feel that my lack of success had any reflection on me personally.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project was the first one to get me to really reflect on this subject when she wrote about challenging herself to find fun in failure. By the way, I am lightyears from ever taking failure lightheartedly. But something else struck me that I read on her blog tonight; it was a comment from a reader who had formulated her own "commandment": Don't rehearse unhappiness. Wow. It's amazing the impact just a few words can have, because these hit me like a ton a bricks. The volumes of dialogue and scenes that I have played out in my mind, doing exactly this. I'm talking about daydreams that make Ingemar Bergman seem like a regular Pollyanna. Now I have a new commandment, too.

I am also thankful for George Takei's FB post on "Famous Failures" from earlier today, which also offered wise thoughts and an alternative take on this whole failure thing.