Why being a failure is the key to being a success.
I really enjoy reading Christine Kane’s blog – she’s a US-based singer-songwriter with a really great line in personal creativity development and some fabulous songs. I read her post today about allowing yourself to be imperfect, and it really struck a chord (please excuse the pun!).
We should all give ourselves permission to be imperfect occasionally, and this holds true for debt management and income generation, too.
We set budgets, and we try very hard to stick to them – that’s wonderful. Whilst we have every right to feel virtuous whilst we are sticking to those budgets, failure is almost inevitable. It might be a big failure, or it might be a small failure – the item isn’t important, what is important is how it makes us feel. I know that when I fail, I feel awful. I wonder why I bother and feel like giving up entirely. This is the exact point at which we should give ourselves permission to fail, and recognise that such failures are inevitable. And then we should pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and carry on sticking to the budget. The key to success isn’t failure, it is accepting that failure is an inevitable part of succeeding. We learn from the experience, perhaps change things a little so that we won’t repeat the failure, and move forwards – just keep swimming, as Dory might say 
I need to give myself permission to fail sometimes. I need to accept that because I fouled something up once, I won’t necessarily do it again, and it is OK to take action to rectify the problem, because actually – suffering and self-punishment don’t help anyone. It’s time to pick myself up, dust myself off and carry on.
It’s OK to do something badly – it is only through those mistakes that we can move forwards. I know that my second budget is a lot more realistic than my first one! I’ve discovered that by giving myself one week per month where I budget for a little “mad money” (cakes, sweets, a small toy for the kids, perhaps), I am managing not to feel deprived and sticking to my budget much better. How did I discover this? By failing on the budget, feeling awful about it and deciding to give myself permission to “fail” one week out of every four. So it isn’t a “failure” anymore – it is the means by which I succeed.
Give it a try today. Do something new and allow yourself to make a bit of a lash up of it. It’s OK, really it is. Next time, you can try to do it a little better, but this first time? It’s all about having a go and enjoying the process. Learn to accept that no person is perfect, and that not being perfect IS FINE
Comment by Lynnae @ Being Frugal
Great post! And frequently, when it comes to our budgets, failure indicates that maybe something needs to be tweaked in the budget. So failure can be a very useful tool. It’s important to remember that dealing with finances is a process, not a finished product.
Comment by Annie
Lynnae: exactly. I couldn’t put it better myself – it’s all about the journey, not the arrival.
Comment by Chris C
I object to the term “being a failure”. That implies that a ‘failure’ is something you ‘are’, and is a major root of depression — if you believe that you ‘are’ a failure, it will very likely come true. Believing that one ‘is’ “a failure” results in the attitude “I’m no good at anything, everbody hates me, going in the garden to eat worms”.
If you modified it to “failing”, that changes the mood. Failing is an action, and is not a continual state (even people who fail at lots of things are not failing at everything, they are at minimum succeeding in surviving). Failing is something which happens to everyone, no one can succeed at everything which is the point of your article, but missing a bus for example doesn’t mean that you ‘are’ “a failure”.
Comment by Mike Whitaker
Very much agree with Chris. Sometimes, we fail. This doesn’t make us a failure, just human. It’s just statistical variation
(Been reading a number of baseball stats books of late (I know, I’m weird)… several of which make the case that batters on ‘hot streaks’ or ’slumps’ quite often aren’t. They’re just proving that what happens to a ball after it leaves the bat is a hell of a lot more random than you think, and they’re just on one tail or other of the random distribution at the moment.)
Comment by otherdeb
I so know what you mean. This week brought two very different events on my financial path. The first was that I had saved enough over the summer that I was able to start a no-minimum-deposit CD at ING Direct, for which I am very proud of myself. the second was realizing that I need to use most of the rest of my savings to help pay my share of October rent. I was pretty sick last term, and my final paycheck for the year reflected some of the sick days I owe my company. My next check will also be short because of this, so I’m not left with much of a choice. Still, instead of beating myself up over it, I am taking the tack that this money was meant as an emergency fund, and will be replaced as soon as possible. A very different attitude for me.
Also, I used the opportunity we get once a year to look at my credit reports from the three major agencies: TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. A lot of the bad stuff has already fallen off the reports, and I found a few things I am having them invesitgate, either because I do not recognize the item, or because I believe I have already resolved it. If where you live allows it, please take advantage of your yearly free look at your credit reports. It could save you a lot of problems down the road.
Comment by Annie
Chris: I agree entirely, which is why, when you read the *article*, I don’t refer to a person as being a success or a failure. Equally, it is difficult to be a complete success – human nature says that there is always something that we want to work on: in the words of Buffy, “We’re all cookie dough, and we’re not finished baking yet”.
The title is just that – a title – which hopefully summarises a concept, rather than expressing the whole of the post
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