COVID - Shining a Light on Failure Everywhere
1 - Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
If nothing else, COVID has given us a heck of a lot of perspective. Some of the things that seemed like important failures or embarrassments pre-COVID - not that big a deal. Remember that one time that you accidentally wore two different shoes to work? Guess what? No one can see your shoes on Zoom.
COVID essentially got on top of a rooftop sometime in the spring of 2020 with a megaphone and started screaming, “It’s all RELATIVE!!!” And it hasn’t stopped screaming.
2 - There Is An Awful Lot That We Can’t Control
COVID has forced us to take a look at how we define failure. Failure is, by its nature, a relative concept. Most people will define it based around a set of expectations that isn’t met. But what happens when a borage of things (like a global pandemic) outside of your control impact your previously set expectations?
Which also begs the question, “What definitions of failure are useful?” And if you want to get super deep, “What other things are outside of my control?
3 - There Are Some Things We Can Control
#3 is not the “you can always control is your attitude” bullet on the list. That is a totally true statement, but just not quite where I am going here. And frankly, feels a little too “lemons out of lemonade” for this particular conversation.
As humans, we need to feel some sort of control or agency over our lives. It is a deeply engrained drive.
In all the uncertainty of the past year, we have been desperately searching for and clinging to some semblance of control and normalcy - ways to keep pushing forward with some sense of identity and purpose, despite the crazy and the constant change. This is not a failure of character or direction. It is a basic human need.
For some of that, it means an aggressive schedule of home redecorating and rearranging. Others have joined the Peloton family and will now follow Miss Ally Love to the ends of the Earth…..on their bike……that goes nowhere. For others it means trying a billion different coping strategies (adult coloring books, crosswords, meditation, exercise, Zoom happy hours), never actually settling on one that sticks, but continuing to try on new things…..treading water until we get to return to some of the things that we have been missing.
4 - Globally, We are Systemically Fragile
All of us have lives that are built on the delicate scaffolding of the society, systems, and communities around us. That “no man is an island” stuff - totally true. The pandemic has put a magnifying glass up to the many ways that systemic inequity is deeply engrained in our society, systems, policies, and beliefs. It has shown us over and over the weaknesses, and can we be blunt - failures - of our social construct and safety nets.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought social and racial injustice and inequity to the forefront of public health. It has highlighted that health equity is still not a reality as COVID-19 has unequally affected many racial and ethnic minority groups, putting them more at risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19.”
- Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)
5 - Failure is Universal & Necessary
COVID has necessarily fast-tracked the world’s cumulative “failure tally.”
In recent history, we have not had such a universally relevant, “Holy crap! We don’t know what to do…..and the only thing to do just going to keep trying things until we find something that works” - kind of experience.
Sometimes you have to throw a lot of mud (a lot a lot) at the wall before something sticks. It is the nature of the game. It is how you figure out what to try next.
We push forward, making the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time, and when we get new information, we recalibrate and try to make better decisions. And then we do that again. And again. And again.
6 - Resilience, Baby
Holy cow, are we tougher than we ever thought? Yes. The answer to that question is YES. If you were a person that didn’t know how much you could take? Well, let me tell you, it is more than you thought. More failure. More stress. More disappointment. More change. More anxiety. More confusion. More learning new things. I am not saying that we are all doing well or that things haven’t been excruciating at times, but what I am saying we all deserve a little credit.
Just in case you need to hear it, “Good freaking job.”
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XO,
Anna Baeten @ Failure Lab
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