yes I’m a mindfulness-based
psychotherapist and the material I’m
going to share with you tonight is
material that is very close to my heart
I’ve spent many many years working with
these ideas that I’m gonna try to give
you a concentrated short journey with
those ideas there we go okay so in
working with failure I find it helpful
to think about it like looking through a
kaleidoscope right it’s constantly
shifting and I think it shifts because
where you are with yourself and where
you are in your life is always moving
now there are objective failures but
tonight we’re gonna focus on what I call
subjective failures because there’s a
spectrum with subjective failures it
depends on how you define it
some must feel like we’re struggling
with career or money others with family
or parenting or looking for love or
struggling to find love it just looks
different for everyone but the paradox
is we need failure right it’s how we
survive it’s how we evolve it’s how we
learn it’s how we adapt and yet why are
so many of us almost hardwired to resist
working with failure what happens when
we resist working with failure is that
we get stuck now the truth is there’s no
easy way out
of working with failure there’s no
bypass or six easy steps and you never
have to deal with it the truth is it’s a
process and it’s in the struggle that we
find resilience
I like this Robert Frost quote the only
way out is through so in this talk we’re
gonna go into a little bit about the
physiological and psychosocial stressors
that are part of the resistance we
encounter when we’re trying to work
through failures and then I’m going to
bring in some insights and some
beautiful practices some strategies to
help us deepen the conversation around
it
okay anyone ever hear of an amygdala we
all have one it is the part of your
brain where your fight-or-flight
response happens and when it detects a
stressor or a perceived threat it fires
and that’s how we know whether we move
into fight or flight now you could get
triggered on the 405 or you could get
triggered when you’re in a big fight
with your partner your amygdala isn’t
really making subtle distinctions and so
when you think about something like
failure right it feels so broad so a
peak what does that mean you know is
there something to do run for the hills
you jump in and beat it up it’s not it’s
complex but it’s very stressful and so
we have many of us and avoidance to
wanting to confront our failures so
avoidant behavior looks like anxiety
depression maybe compulsive behaviors
maybe we binge eat or binge watch
Netflix we don’t want to deal with
failures because they’re so difficult
right there’s a lot of negative emotions
and thoughts that attend the feeling of
failure now when we go into fight or
flight this is the primitive part of our
brain being activated when we get
emotionally triggered we cut off our
rational minds we don’t have access to
right our higher functioning our
curiosity our insight our compassion
right we’re sort of coming from this
place right here oh and why that’s
problematic is because we need the
higher functioning in order to work
through failures better complex and
settle there we have our medulla all
right our negativity bias so if your
amygdala detects stressors your
negativity bias remembers them so let’s
say half the village died off last year
from eating poison red berries your
negativity bias is going to make sure
you have an aversion for red berries for
the rest of time but let’s say you went
on a terrible tinder date your
negativity bias is not
operate in the same way right maybe
it’ll start to spin a web a narrative
how you’re feeling jaded and cynical and
sarcastic and maybe even fatalistic
about ever finding love so on one level
your negativity bias is protecting you
but it’s not helping you solve the
question right it’s not gonna get you
closer to finding connection or intimacy
so you can see that our amygdala and our
negativity bias they function more like
hammers than scalpels and you need more
subtlety when you’re dealing with
complex problems so now we’re going to
move into the psychosocial piece social
stigma around failure now some of the
stigma around failure is self generated
but a lot of it is really in the culture
we get the message that it’s not okay to
fail right and this triggers our social
anxiety because we want to belong to the
pack we want to feel like we’re
connected right what happens is when we
feel shame around failing we don’t want
to experience the rejection or the
humiliation or the embarrassment and
that triggers our fight-or-flight – this
is another important one permission to
fail I don’t know how many of you are
parents or teachers but as a parent you
give your kid endless permission to fail
whether they’re learning to walk or talk
or use utensils or social media but when
we’ve become adults it’s like a wall
comes down somehow we retrack that
permission to fail
even the term permission to fail right
is kind of suspect
how about permission to learn we get
messages from the society cultural
messages that say hey you can just do it
all you need is perseverance and
tenacity and you just need to believe in
yourself and you can just do it but the
truth is you can’t just do it right you
don’t have confidence right out at the
gate you develop confidence you acquire
confidence as you move through your
experience so I always say it’s okay to
pick later but not to procrastinate but
it’s really kind of interesting right
that this is more outcome based versus
process based and I think when we’re
working with failures we have to really
think about how do I move in to that
place where I can do it where I can
muster the courage and then this one
here frustrated expectations I think is
really at the core of why we suffer so
much when we experience a failure right
many of us have a fantasy let’s say that
we want the world to work out on our
terms right we get attached to a
particular outcome or a particular thing
and we get devastated when it doesn’t
happen and instead of accepting the
disappointment and accepting the loss we
fixate on it right and that causes us a
great deal of suffering so I think when
you’re looking at sort of the complexity
of all these factors here it’s really
not easy to work with your resistance
and I would say in my personal life and
in my clinical work what I’ve come to
understand is you cannot metabolize the
lessons of failure you cannot get the
meaning out of your experience until you
have a way of containing all the
negative emotional thoughts and feelings
that come up and they can come up in any
different variety right working through
failures such a specific such an
individual journey and I think that’s
why methods don’t apply right there’s no
universal plan to work through failures
this is the part of my speech where my
12 year old son rolls his eyeballs some
of you know him he says it’s really
boring but I disagree meditation and
mindfulness practice meditation has been
around for eons and the West has
recently embraced it in its secularized
form but meditation and mindfulness
practice do just that right they can
contain your anxious mind
but they can also down regulate your
triggered nervous system and you really
need both kinds of containment so
meditation is the process of sitting
anchoring in the breath allowing for
your thoughts and feelings and
sensations to arise without judging your
experience just observing and coming
back to the breath again and again and
it’s this process right that down
regulates you from your sympathetic
nervous system arousal high alert to
your parasympathetic nervous
base home I kind of I like this image
here
it’s an aquarium I’m not sure if it’s a
shark or will but I think meditation and
mindfulness practice allow you some
distance right you turn the volume down
on those negative thoughts and feelings
and they give you perspective now
mindful practices mindfulness practice
is a sister practice a complementary
practice to meditation and it is the
skill of being in the present moment
with intention creating self-awareness
allowing for those same thoughts and
feelings to arise but not getting
attached not over identifying with those
feelings and when we get to that place
where we can quiet our anxious mind we
can get into the real deep questions we
can get into the true nature of
resistance this is when we haven’t
started meditating and this is where
your inner wisdom personified might look
the deep questions what is the nature of
the resistance you’re confronting and I
think it’s two things it’s either one
what is the limit that I must accept
right what is that frustrated
expectation that I must reconcile with
maybe I wanted that job so badly and I
didn’t get it or that person I fell in
love with chose somebody else right how
can I
cept the loss and grieve the loss so
that I can move on now if the next
question is you’re at a threshold where
you must cross then the question is how
do I take responsibility for myself how
do I take responsibility for that desire
for that that instinct to move forward
acceptance and responsibility right it’s
a threshold so now we’re really
understanding how failures are the
doorways the initiations really into the
deepest kinds of questions right not
only do they build resilience this idea
of acceptance and responsibility is
absolutely critical to adult development
and we get to see our life not from the
framework of being a victim but choosing
embracing our fate changing our fate
creating our destiny because we have a
really clear sense of what we need to do
so as I wrap up this talk and I know
everybody does that I do want to put a
challenge to you guys which is to think
about right what issue do I have that
feels really unresolved that I’ve been
cruel and judgmental and uncompassionate
around could I take some of these ideas
compassion curiosity and mindfulness and
can I change the conversation because
the only way out is through thank you
[Applause]
psychotherapist and the material I’m
going to share with you tonight is
material that is very close to my heart
I’ve spent many many years working with
these ideas that I’m gonna try to give
you a concentrated short journey with
those ideas there we go okay so in
working with failure I find it helpful
to think about it like looking through a
kaleidoscope right it’s constantly
shifting and I think it shifts because
where you are with yourself and where
you are in your life is always moving
now there are objective failures but
tonight we’re gonna focus on what I call
subjective failures because there’s a
spectrum with subjective failures it
depends on how you define it
some must feel like we’re struggling
with career or money others with family
or parenting or looking for love or
struggling to find love it just looks
different for everyone but the paradox
is we need failure right it’s how we
survive it’s how we evolve it’s how we
learn it’s how we adapt and yet why are
so many of us almost hardwired to resist
working with failure what happens when
we resist working with failure is that
we get stuck now the truth is there’s no
easy way out
of working with failure there’s no
bypass or six easy steps and you never
have to deal with it the truth is it’s a
process and it’s in the struggle that we
find resilience
I like this Robert Frost quote the only
way out is through so in this talk we’re
gonna go into a little bit about the
physiological and psychosocial stressors
that are part of the resistance we
encounter when we’re trying to work
through failures and then I’m going to
bring in some insights and some
beautiful practices some strategies to
help us deepen the conversation around
it
okay anyone ever hear of an amygdala we
all have one it is the part of your
brain where your fight-or-flight
response happens and when it detects a
stressor or a perceived threat it fires
and that’s how we know whether we move
into fight or flight now you could get
triggered on the 405 or you could get
triggered when you’re in a big fight
with your partner your amygdala isn’t
really making subtle distinctions and so
when you think about something like
failure right it feels so broad so a
peak what does that mean you know is
there something to do run for the hills
you jump in and beat it up it’s not it’s
complex but it’s very stressful and so
we have many of us and avoidance to
wanting to confront our failures so
avoidant behavior looks like anxiety
depression maybe compulsive behaviors
maybe we binge eat or binge watch
Netflix we don’t want to deal with
failures because they’re so difficult
right there’s a lot of negative emotions
and thoughts that attend the feeling of
failure now when we go into fight or
flight this is the primitive part of our
brain being activated when we get
emotionally triggered we cut off our
rational minds we don’t have access to
right our higher functioning our
curiosity our insight our compassion
right we’re sort of coming from this
place right here oh and why that’s
problematic is because we need the
higher functioning in order to work
through failures better complex and
settle there we have our medulla all
right our negativity bias so if your
amygdala detects stressors your
negativity bias remembers them so let’s
say half the village died off last year
from eating poison red berries your
negativity bias is going to make sure
you have an aversion for red berries for
the rest of time but let’s say you went
on a terrible tinder date your
negativity bias is not
operate in the same way right maybe
it’ll start to spin a web a narrative
how you’re feeling jaded and cynical and
sarcastic and maybe even fatalistic
about ever finding love so on one level
your negativity bias is protecting you
but it’s not helping you solve the
question right it’s not gonna get you
closer to finding connection or intimacy
so you can see that our amygdala and our
negativity bias they function more like
hammers than scalpels and you need more
subtlety when you’re dealing with
complex problems so now we’re going to
move into the psychosocial piece social
stigma around failure now some of the
stigma around failure is self generated
but a lot of it is really in the culture
we get the message that it’s not okay to
fail right and this triggers our social
anxiety because we want to belong to the
pack we want to feel like we’re
connected right what happens is when we
feel shame around failing we don’t want
to experience the rejection or the
humiliation or the embarrassment and
that triggers our fight-or-flight – this
is another important one permission to
fail I don’t know how many of you are
parents or teachers but as a parent you
give your kid endless permission to fail
whether they’re learning to walk or talk
or use utensils or social media but when
we’ve become adults it’s like a wall
comes down somehow we retrack that
permission to fail
even the term permission to fail right
is kind of suspect
how about permission to learn we get
messages from the society cultural
messages that say hey you can just do it
all you need is perseverance and
tenacity and you just need to believe in
yourself and you can just do it but the
truth is you can’t just do it right you
don’t have confidence right out at the
gate you develop confidence you acquire
confidence as you move through your
experience so I always say it’s okay to
pick later but not to procrastinate but
it’s really kind of interesting right
that this is more outcome based versus
process based and I think when we’re
working with failures we have to really
think about how do I move in to that
place where I can do it where I can
muster the courage and then this one
here frustrated expectations I think is
really at the core of why we suffer so
much when we experience a failure right
many of us have a fantasy let’s say that
we want the world to work out on our
terms right we get attached to a
particular outcome or a particular thing
and we get devastated when it doesn’t
happen and instead of accepting the
disappointment and accepting the loss we
fixate on it right and that causes us a
great deal of suffering so I think when
you’re looking at sort of the complexity
of all these factors here it’s really
not easy to work with your resistance
and I would say in my personal life and
in my clinical work what I’ve come to
understand is you cannot metabolize the
lessons of failure you cannot get the
meaning out of your experience until you
have a way of containing all the
negative emotional thoughts and feelings
that come up and they can come up in any
different variety right working through
failures such a specific such an
individual journey and I think that’s
why methods don’t apply right there’s no
universal plan to work through failures
this is the part of my speech where my
12 year old son rolls his eyeballs some
of you know him he says it’s really
boring but I disagree meditation and
mindfulness practice meditation has been
around for eons and the West has
recently embraced it in its secularized
form but meditation and mindfulness
practice do just that right they can
contain your anxious mind
but they can also down regulate your
triggered nervous system and you really
need both kinds of containment so
meditation is the process of sitting
anchoring in the breath allowing for
your thoughts and feelings and
sensations to arise without judging your
experience just observing and coming
back to the breath again and again and
it’s this process right that down
regulates you from your sympathetic
nervous system arousal high alert to
your parasympathetic nervous
base home I kind of I like this image
here
it’s an aquarium I’m not sure if it’s a
shark or will but I think meditation and
mindfulness practice allow you some
distance right you turn the volume down
on those negative thoughts and feelings
and they give you perspective now
mindful practices mindfulness practice
is a sister practice a complementary
practice to meditation and it is the
skill of being in the present moment
with intention creating self-awareness
allowing for those same thoughts and
feelings to arise but not getting
attached not over identifying with those
feelings and when we get to that place
where we can quiet our anxious mind we
can get into the real deep questions we
can get into the true nature of
resistance this is when we haven’t
started meditating and this is where
your inner wisdom personified might look
the deep questions what is the nature of
the resistance you’re confronting and I
think it’s two things it’s either one
what is the limit that I must accept
right what is that frustrated
expectation that I must reconcile with
maybe I wanted that job so badly and I
didn’t get it or that person I fell in
love with chose somebody else right how
can I
cept the loss and grieve the loss so
that I can move on now if the next
question is you’re at a threshold where
you must cross then the question is how
do I take responsibility for myself how
do I take responsibility for that desire
for that that instinct to move forward
acceptance and responsibility right it’s
a threshold so now we’re really
understanding how failures are the
doorways the initiations really into the
deepest kinds of questions right not
only do they build resilience this idea
of acceptance and responsibility is
absolutely critical to adult development
and we get to see our life not from the
framework of being a victim but choosing
embracing our fate changing our fate
creating our destiny because we have a
really clear sense of what we need to do
so as I wrap up this talk and I know
everybody does that I do want to put a
challenge to you guys which is to think
about right what issue do I have that
feels really unresolved that I’ve been
cruel and judgmental and uncompassionate
around could I take some of these ideas
compassion curiosity and mindfulness and
can I change the conversation because
the only way out is through thank you
[Applause]
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