Soul Over Matter. Zhi Gang Sha
you’re going to screw up and you’re going to make a mistake that costs you. It may cost you in time, in energy, in heartache, or in cash, but whatever the cost, know that it will happen.
The issue, then, isn’t if you’ll make mistakes on the road to prosperity, but what you’ll do when they happen.
First of all, know that you’re not alone. Mistakes happen all the time, yes. But understand that they happen to everyone, not just you. You may have screwed up, but you haven’t screwed up any worse than the rest of us. If it doesn’t seem that way, it’s because most people don’t like to talk about failure. Show me someone with a perfect, error-free life and I’ll show you someone who’s too scared to tell you the truth.
With this in mind, you’re presented with a glorious new opportunity the next time you make a mistake: You don’t have to beat yourself up the way you usually do.
The greatest danger when things go wrong isn’t the thing going wrong, but your judgment of yourself in the situation. You may judge yourself by feeling you caused the mistake. Or perpetuated it. Or weren’t able to resolve it. You may judge yourself for your response to the hardship. But the cause, the response, the behavior, the resolution—they all matter less than how you treat yourself in their wake.
That’s the real potential “wrongness” of being wrong.
This “failure phobia” we all experience is something we come by honestly. We all learned early that mistakes are “bad.” You make a mistake on a test? You get a C instead of an A. You bring that C home? Your parents are upset. You make a mistake in the office? You could lose your job. Your career. Your license.
Our world punishes mistakes. That’s the lesson you were taught, and it’s why you take failure personally.
Ultimately, though, that perception is also what slows you down. It stops you from trying something new. From taking risks. From doing things that are intuitive. That failure phobia stops you from taking a moment to listen to that inner voice, the whisper of your soul, saying Try something different.
Yes, the programmed lessons of mistakes are powerful ones. Right now, you have many years of unconscious training telling you to ignore your instincts, your intuition, your soul. You have decades of programming telling you to invest your time and energy in just maintaining. In treading water. In protecting the status quo at all costs.
But remember the cost of that. It’s mediocrity. A ceaseless, mindless commitment to what is safe.
Here’s what you’re telling yourself: Mistakes are bad. I made one, so I must be bad, too. If I just never make another one, everything will be okay.
But it won’t, will it?
It’s time to realize that mistakes are the best thing that could happen to us. Not in the trite sense of “everything happens for a reason,” but in the knowledge that everything happens for a reason, and that reason is there to serve.
What to do when things go wrong? Forgive yourself, forgive others, and find the reason that is there to serve. Find the nugget of wisdom. The lesson. And move forward to something even better.
Don’t avoid the mistakes because you’re afraid you might be something less.
Celebrate the mistakes, because without them you just might be.
I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.
—Thomas A. Edison
Just like Thomas Edison, who made more than ten thousand attempts before he found the proper substance to make the filament for the lightbulb, you too have found ways that won’t work and you are on your way to inventing what will work to light your version of a lightbulb. And it will most likely take a lot less than ten thousand tries.
Hold On Lightly: Letting Go of Expectations
The root of suffering is attachment.
—Buddha
Expectation can be a heady, intoxicating feeling. Looking forward to that first date. Dreaming of your next vacation or your annual bonus. Picturing the new car you’ll buy when your lease expires or the new home you’ll move into after your wedding. They’re all exciting plans for the future, and they carry an emotional charge that gives us a little boost of pleasure when we anticipate them.
On the surface, that seems pretty harmless. After all, what could be wrong with having something to look forward to?
The problem occurs when expectations grow into a powerful form of attachment, and that has some very real potential side effects.
Expectations have a way of evolving into a need to have things turn out in a very specific way. You get so caught up in exactly how you expect something to be that you can’t accept anything different. You’re attached to an outcome that’s so specific—the perfect weather for your perfect wedding day—that you can’t enjoy the real value of the moment.
Attachment also puts energy anywhere but in the present. It’s a focus on the future—this is where I’m going or someday I’ll have that. Or it’s a focus on the past—I’m not going back there again or I deserve better because of all that hard work. As a result, attachment has a way of becoming like wearing a set of blinders: You can miss opportunities and possibilities that are just outside your narrow field of vision. When you’re too attached, you simply can’t see them.
So how, then, do we resolve the need to have goals for the future—to plan and set a course for where we want to be—with the dangers of attachment?
To start with, instead of goals, I prefer the term intention. In law intent is a big deal. When we look to where criminality lies—in determining first-degree or second-degree murder, for example—we rely on intent. Did the person intend to cause harm or was it accidental or negligent?
Intention is a powerful force in law and no less so in life. Where a goal is a wish, an intention is a declaration of the energy behind an outcome. Goals can be a slippery slope to attachment; intention, on the other hand, is about the energy of the present.
Once you have an intention, it’s time to walk the tightrope. You need to set an intention, but then let go of the outcome—be willing to let go of your need to have things work out in a certain way. You must be willing to detach.
This can be a tricky idea. Detaching isn’t about not caring. After all, how can you stay motivated to do what’s required to move ahead in life if you don’t care? What you’re really detaching from is the meaning of things. Consider the following statements:
If I get the promotion, I’ll be respected.
If I earn this much, I’ll be happy.
If I have this and that, people will look up to me.
Those are all ways of attaching meaning to things and events, and it’s that meaning that has the power to cause suffering. Detach from the meaning, and you detach from suffering the fear of a failed outcome.
Set the intention, but detach from the meaning. Accept that the outcome may be different, and the path impossible to see. Imagine that your intention is a beautiful rose that you hold in your hands. Hold it too loosely and you lose it. But hold it too tightly and you crush it.
The secret is to hold on lightly.
The Trim Tab Factor
In my midtwenties, before my pivot to life as an attorney, I was working in New York City as a public school teacher. My wife was a teacher, too, but working on Long Island.
During her time there she met a couple with a boat. We hit it off, and one weekend they invited us to go with them