Elizabeth Day: Life Lessons on Failure, Shame and Infertility #283

1. Control Your Response to Failure

Understand that failure is inevitable, but you are in control of your response to it, which is where your character is formed. Choose to fail with meaning and don’t be afraid, as every failure can teach something meaningful in time.

2. Embrace Vulnerability & Share

Be vulnerable and share your failures and personal experiences with others, especially those causing shame. This is the quickest path to authentic connection, dissipates shame, and can make you feel less alone and more seen.

3. Look Inward for Self-Worth

Do internal work and look inside for answers about your self-worth, rather than seeking external validation or allowing others’ opinions to define you. This helps you truly like and love who you are, reducing the need for competitive or people-pleasing behaviors.

4. Learn Emotional Regulation

Learn to emotionally regulate better by not immediately responding when triggered; instead, go inward to understand the root cause of your reaction. This leads to more effective communication and better outcomes, as your nervous system’s state influences perception.

5. Acknowledge & Express Anger

Acknowledge your anger when it rises, rather than suppressing it or masking it with other emotions like sadness. Appropriately expressed anger, especially in solidarity, can be an enormous force for good social change.

6. Stop Extreme People-Pleasing

Make a conscious decision to stop people-pleasing to the extent that you outsource your sense of self or desires to others’ opinions. This unsustainable behavior is often rooted in a fear of not being enough and can be a form of unconscious manipulation.

7. Question Life’s Premises

Always question the premise of what you’ve been told makes for a successful or happy life, whether by society or companies. Your unique definition should be grounded in intuitive knowledge, which requires quiet, stillness, and peace away from white noise.

8. View Breakups as Learning

See breakups, whether romantic, friendship, or work-related, not as a tragedy or failure, but as a source of learning and ‘data acquisition.’ Relationships ending can mean you’ve outgrown them or learned necessary lessons that equip you for future, better connections.

9. Believe Life Teaches Lessons

Choose to believe that the universe is unfolding as intended and that life will generally teach you the lessons you need to learn if you’re open to the possibility. This empowering approach helps you deal with inevitable obstacles and stresses, leading to greater happiness and contentment.

10. Practice Straightforward Communication

Cultivate straightforward communication in all relationships by directly expressing what you want and asking others what they need (e.g., ‘Do you want me to listen or provide a solution?’). This is a transformative and underrated quality that prevents miscommunication and game-playing.

11. Explore Uncomfortable Emotions

Go inward and explore uncomfortable, dark emotions you’ve covered up or distracted yourself from with ‘junk happiness habits.’ This process, often prompted by significant life events, is where ’the gold lies’ and where true freedom can be found.

12. Pay Yourself Kindness

Pay yourself as much attention and kindness as you would a best friend or an audience member. This self-care is not selfish; it’s like putting on your own oxygen mask first, essential for your well-being.

13. Train Out Negative Self-Talk

Train yourself out of negative self-talk by giving your anxious brain a name and questioning its objective evidence for negative assertions. If no evidence exists, replace the negative thought with a positive one, as your anxious narration is not who you are.

14. Practice Constructive Pessimism

When taking risks, practice constructive pessimism by imagining the worst possible outcome and assessing if you could cope with it. This helps evaluate risks, as the extremes are unlikely, and the most probable route is somewhere in the middle.

15. Avoid Rigid Life Plans

Avoid creating rigid five-year plans for your life, as they can lead to unhappiness and a feeling of failure if things don’t go exactly according to schedule. Instead, have a rough ‘mood board’ for the future and focus on practical actions today, allowing room for evolution and responding to opportunities.

16. Don’t Avoid Potential Failure

Do not avoid situations where it’s possible you might fail, especially if they bring you joy or growth. Avoiding potential failure can lead to missing out on fulfilling experiences and wasting parts of your life.

17. Write to Process Emotions

If talking is difficult, use writing as a way to make sense of the world, process emotional experiences, and release shame, especially during times of grief or trauma. Writing can create meaning where there might otherwise be absence.

18. Acknowledge Your Privilege

Acknowledge your privilege when discussing failure or life experiences, recognizing that individual experiences differ greatly based on background, marginalization, and opportunities. This provides crucial nuance and understanding in conversations.

19. De-stigmatize Failure Language

Actively work to de-stigmatize the language used around failure and sensitive topics, especially in professional or medical contexts. Language is powerful and can be dehumanizing, making people feel at fault when they are not.

20. Use Humanizing Language

Employ warm, humanizing language, particularly in sensitive contexts like medicine, instead of jargon or labels. This makes people feel seen, safe, and not at fault, fostering better communication and outcomes.

21. Doctors: Translate Medical Jargon

Doctors should translate medical jargon into understandable language for patients, rather than using terms that disconnect them. Effective communication is crucial to patient outcomes, influencing their feelings and autonomy over their body.

22. Doctors: Avoid Labeling Patients

Doctors should avoid labeling patients directly with their illness (e.g., ‘you are depressed’); instead, describe symptoms or conditions (e.g., ‘your blood sugar is consistent with type 2 diabetes’). Direct labeling can make the illness part of a person’s identity, making it harder to free themselves from it.

23. Create Failure Acknowledgment

Implement mechanisms within systems, such as hospitals, to acknowledge failures and learn from them openly. This helps overcome fear, fosters growth, and improves future practices.

24. Treat Competitive Self Compassionately

If you identify as competitive, treat that part of yourself with compassion rather than denial. Acknowledge it as a learned behavior, potentially tied to seeking love or validation, and recognize its exhausting nature.

25. Balance Hope and Expectation

Practice balancing hope and expectation with the realistic knowledge of potential loss, especially in ambiguous or challenging situations like fertility journeys. This helps navigate difficult headspaces and prevents internalized failure from strong manifestation efforts.

26. Practice Active Listening

Cultivate active listening and compassion for others’ diverse life experiences, especially those who feel like outsiders or are misunderstood. This is a crucial quality for making people feel seen and understood.

27. Acknowledge Unintended Pain

Acknowledge and apologize if you’ve inadvertently caused pain or phrased something in an inelegant way, even if your intention was different. This fosters better communication and ensures others feel heard, rather than leading to defensiveness.

28. Be Open to Learning

Be open to saying ‘I don’t know, please tell me’ and asking others to teach you. This creates more room for understanding and avoids the pressure of having an immediate response or opinion, fostering a learning mindset.

29. Complete Yourself First

Do the work on yourself to ‘complete yourself’ first before expecting a partner to complete you in a relationship. This prepares you for healthy, fulfilling relationships and avoids unrealistic expectations often portrayed in media.

30. Cultivate Faith in Greater Purpose

Cultivate faith in something bigger than yourself, whether called the universe, a collective consciousness, or a more evolved being. This involves actively working at it, taking a leap into the unknown, and making yourself vulnerable.