Give yourself permission to fail!

Ah Taylor Swift. The queen of lyrics that mean so much. The master of telling it as it is. And it seems now, the one with some very meaningful answers to life too!

When she went up on stage to the Innovator award during the IHeartRadio Music Awards in 2023, she said these very important words: “I do want to say that the thing with these exciting nights and moments and specifically this award that I’m so lucky to have gotten is that they’re shining a light on the choices I made that worked out. Right? The ones that turned out to be good ideas. I really, really want everyone to know, especially young people that the 100s or 1000s of dumb ideas that I’ve had are what led me to my good ideas. You have to give yourself permission to fail. I try as hard as I can not to fail because it’s embarrassing but I do give myself permission to and you should too. Go easy on yourself and just make the right choices that feel right for you.”

Hold the presses! Taylor wants us to… fail?

Well, she may just be on to something! You see, we often tend to do the things that we know for a fact we’re going to succeed in doing. Why rock the boat and try something new that you have no chance of succeeding in?

It’s called the fear of failure. Hands up who is familiar with this? Chances are you and everyone else reading this! Fear paralyses us and causes us to stay within our comfort zones. We get it – nobody wants to be bad at something, or worse, come across as being completely wrong and making a fool of ourselves when we fail.

The huge downside to that? Limiting ourselves to only doing what we know means cutting ourselves from any other possibilities that we may actually be good at too! Imagine if Taylor gave up after that first guitar lesson where she completely sucked? There’ll be trouble!

You see, when you give yourself permission to fail, it means you’re allowing yourself to try new things, knowing that it might not go as planned. It also means that you understand that even if this happens, it’s all ok.

Because that’s how we learn. Think of something you want to try but are afraid to fail at. Learning a new language? Picking up a new skill like photography or baking? Signing up for that yoga teaching course? Whatever your thing is, think about doing it and then think about the worst possible thing that can happen.

Got it? Ok now think of how you feel about failing. What if you take longer than the rest to learn the new language? What if your pictures don’t turn out how you want them the first few tries? What if your bakes are all fails?

How will this ruin your life?

We are guessing it probably won’t ruin too much of your life! In the grand scheme of things, a little bit of failure won’t be that big of a deal. In fact, it should motivate you to do better and try out different ways of getting the results you want. And the most important thing? You should enjoy the process of doing!

Failure should never feel like an ending. It should actually be the beginning of the great things you can achieve if you keep at it. That’s what accepting failure with the right attitude is all about… you know, just like how Taylor approached hers!

So the next time you want to try something but am too afraid to give it a go because you don’t want to appear like a failure? Well, here’s more of what Taylor has to say: “What I did do was try to make the right decision for me at the time, whether or not it had ever been successfully done before.” So go on, embrace your failures to make way for great achievements!

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash.