Have you ever wondered… about failing on purpose? I have. How else can you let go of perfectionism and give yourself more grace? Please do not misunderstand. I do not sugjest trying this practice out with any major milestone in your life, but what if you let a small deadline slide a bit? What if you get to work a little late once or twice? Truly, what is the worst that will happen? Sure, your mind may think up all kinds of wild and extreme possibilities, but how often do those ideas actually come to fruition? Rarely, so we can learn to be better at giving ourselves grace when we become comfortable with failure.
Grace is the face that love wears when it meets imperfection.
-Joseph R. Cooke
I know it sounds weird at first to think of cozying up to failure. Why not, though? We will all fail. We all have, and we all still will. Have you handled it well historically? Can you do a better job moving forward if you channel more grace? Yes, failure can be difficult, but it can also lead to growth. By uncovering hidden opportunities within it for change and improvement, we can find the silver or even gold lining to any subpar situation. We can rescore the true par of it when we part with initial expectations and gracefully accept the present state of things because anything else is fruitless, wasted energy worth avoiding.
We can spend a life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can embrace the open-endedness of the human situation.
-Pema Chödrön
To be completely honest, I had even considered not writing a post today as an example of giving myself some grace. If I did not have a worthwhile idea and did not want to force something poorly, then maybe the absence or silence would paint a picture. Entertaining the idea of gifting myself that grace granted me this idea instead. Flow freely and fluidly forever with fewer fixations to find fruitful and fortifying foundations and fulfilling fuel.
Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.
-Arianna Huffington
Ultimately, I am happy and grateful to be writing this post. Skipping any part of a cycle unannounced does not feel right to me. It lacks grace, and I am doing my best to avoid such behavior. It would not have been a good example of mindfully failing on purpose.
Maybe it is wise. Maybe it is dumb. Time will tell. Stay wondrous, y’all <3