Trying is the First Step to Failure

This is apparently a quote from Homer Simpson that feels so very real to me. Weirdly, I don’t think it has ever stopped me from trying things. I have rejection sensitive dysphoria, but it doesn’t usually prevent me from trying new things. It just leads me to expect that I should move directly from trying the new thing for the first time to being able to do it perfectly well within, maybe, a week or two. Or maybe a day or two. And then immediately be the best at it.

Trying new things and demanding perfection or near perfection from myself means that I am unforgivingly harsh in my criticisms of myself, something that worked well for a long time. I must have an enormous well of energy, or I used to, because forcing myself to work harder and harder without any break was how I spent most of my life, from age 15 to 40, and it led to a long list of really impressive accomplishments.

What it did not lead to was happiness. I thought for a long time that it led to satisfaction instead, but it didn’t, not really. Because I never allowed myself to spend a single moment feeling satisfied with what I had accomplished. It was a one second delay, moving from almost finished with this directly to “next thing on the list.” For a couple of decades as a writer, I had a really long list of books that I wanted to get finished that I felt pressure to write before more books were added to the list.

I don’t like failure.

You might say I really, really don’t like failure.

And yet, I’m not sure why it doesn’t stop me from trying things. I am really, really stubborn about trying things. And hating myself for not being good enough at new things.

At some point, I would like to become better at accepting failure as part of my life. I’m not sure there is any way to do that except to work on my self-talk after I’ve failed. I’m trying to move from “you are terrible at this and that means you have to try harder” to “let’s look at this with the kindness another person might deserve after having failed at a difficult or new thing.” From “you must troubleshoot all of the possible reasons you failed and figure out what led to this failure” to “you are allowed to make mistakes and not be a terrible person. You are allowed to be not good at things and still enjoy them—or not enjoy them and not do them anymore.” From “God expects perfection from you” to “no human is perfect or even close and the only people who appear to be are ones who are lying or not looking at the whole picture, and all that means is that showing imperfection is one of the kindest and generous things that you can do for others.”