Re-Framing Failure

Here is the thing about failure. It's like problems. It is inevitable. We will always have problems and we will always experience failure as long as we live. This is called reality. And it's not all bad news. Failure inspires innovation and creativity. Aren't sticky notes, one of my favorite school supplies EVER, the result of a failure to create something else?

Why, oh why, do we ever think that avoiding failures and problems is even a thing? It's NOT a thing.

So here is what is THE thing: horrific failures and huge disappointments are inevitable. The question is, what are we going to do about them? Are we going to allow them to define us or will we use them to teach us? I am sure there are plenty of GIFs and memes about how failure is a good thing. Failure is not a good thing. It is a useful necessity.

So I personally do not celebrate failure. I cry and pout and gnash my teeth and eat a jar of peanut butter. But eventually, I try to leverage the experience for change. Pain, it turns out, is necessary for growth.

So while we are all running around and trying to avoid failure, I ask you to reconsider: what are we losing by playing small, by being so afraid of failure that we shortchange our potential for growth...and dare I say it, even success.

Still Growing

I want to warn you about new problems. Most people will prefer that you keep your old ones because they are predictable for them, and they never have to re-evaluate their assumptions about you. This is unpleasant for the brain who craves consistency over wisdom, habit over discernment.

My beloved tennis playing husband has a whole new set of problems now that I can place my serve and my cross-court backhand is smoking. He has a new set of angles to consider because I am getting to the corners and running into the net like I mean business. I still miss a fair number of these shots, but I am making him think and his brain HATES that.

But here is what we both love. We love that we know that we may be old but we are still growing. THAT is very sexy. Go be your sexy self today!

Change something!

Fail Better

When I was a little kid we lived in Virginia Beach. On the weekends we would often go through the tunnel and head back to Portsmouth, where my father's people lived, for family visits. For the length of the tunnel ride, my dad would yell, "Don't open those windows kids, if you do the water will come in!" I was terrified. I thought we were driving through water and our life depended on quickly plowing through it in our Chevy before our oxygen ran our or we sprung a leak. It turns out, I was also wrong about that tunnel. It was keeping the water out, not providing a mysterious passage via underwater travel in a Chevy.

Much of my life has been spent searching for the "right" belief system, the "correct" way to behave, the "best practice" for whatever project I undertook. I was wrong. I had it all backwards.

Growth, change, transformation - none of that stuff that I value so very much - is achieved through getting stuff right. I have fired myself from my endless search for the right answers in favor of what is turning out to be a ton more fun - wading through all the ways I am wrong, acknowledge it, embrace it and learn from it. If we can find a way to use our mistakes to make a few less mistakes tomorrow - we are growing!

Where is your tunnel-full-of-water leading you astray? Where is your endless search for improvement really taking you? What about if we all could get a bit more excited about noticing what we don't know, what we've gotten wrong, what we've failed at....and how that can help us learn something new, do something a little less wrong tomorrow, fail better?

What’s Next?

Last night we went out to the courts and played tennis. It was fun! Our rallies were longer, our score less lopsided in Pete's favor. We realize that that old saying about "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is oh, so true.

The pandemic locked us up and closed us in. Reports of post-pandemic anxiety disorders and depression are everywhere! Many of us did NOT do an amazing backyard renovation project that we revealed on Instagram. Most of us never got around to cleaning our all our closets or learned about Maria Kondo folding techniques. We're a bit like circus animals who are so conditioned to a small confined space that they never even try to escape - even though escape would be easy!

Listen - we've busted out and we've come back to tell you the truth - so can you! Get out of the routine, mundane, nothing's gonna change mindset! Find your way back to new adventures. Play more! It's perfectly reasonable to acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had on the world - but I ask you: What are you going to take responsibility for as a result? What are you going to do to change you? How will you change your relationship with anxiety and fear? The world is not our responsibility, although we can be responsible members of our community.

But what is our responsibility is ourselves. What are you going to do next?

Which World Do You Want to Inhabit?

In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck says this:

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world - the world of fixed traits - success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other - the world of changing qualities - it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you’re not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you’re not fulfilling your potential. In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world effort is what makes you smart or talented. You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.

Which world do you want to inhabit? Stop. Pause. REALLY think about this.

The last few years have been a real wake up call for me. I’ve had to think and consider: how could people I respect, love and admire have such different perspectives on the world in which we live? I have friends all over the place politically, theologically, and economically. It’s been so good and hard and required so much effort to stretch myself, to make a choice to value the MINDSET of others. And the more I practice this, the more sensitive I become to when it is not practiced. Here’s an example. Last week I got my hair cut (yippee vaccines and businesses that practice rigid protocols for Covid-19)! Because of the distancing and limitations on numbers of folks in the salon it was easy to hear what another client was sharing with her stylist. She was talking about all those pastors who were so lazy as to not figure out how to open up their churches on Sunday morning, including her own. It turns out, I’m her pastor. She waxed on about how the least the church could have done was open up for parking lot worship. After all, she lamented, the church near her house did that - why couldn’t hers? She had a mindset, and I totally appreciated hearing it. Here’s why.

When we came to a screeching halt a year ago, we started scrambling. Someone volunteered to help create a nice outside space where small groups could gather. I had always wanted one of those spaces pre-pandemic so I was ALL IN. Unfortunately, the office condominium association was not. Nor were they keen on parking lot church. Because, you see, unlike a church who owns their parking lot, we have to get permission for such things and permission is not easily granted. I think it would be fair to say that without a MINDSET shift, it would be easy to get annoyed at listening to someone who you love call you lazy.

But I’ve been practicing the SHIFT. And what I actually learned was this: Teresa, sometimes you expect people to be mind readers. It never occurred to me that someone might think I was lazy or that I would not go to any lengths to keep our community together. What a great shift for me to realize that this is not true. In the future, I hope I will remember to be more open about our limitations, instead of assuming I am protecting people from the annoying details of being a pastor in the middle of a pandemic.