There Is No Failure

Sometimes, on my favorite mornings, I awaken to an insight.

The other morning, as I opened my eyes, a clarity came to me:
There is no failure. There is only a choice – to leap or not to leap.

So point blank. So clear. And it makes so much sense.

Up until this point, I’ve believed in definitions of failure vs. success that point to an end goal, a destination. If I don’t make it there, I’ve failed, which in many ways makes me never want to start! But no, that’s just not it! With that awakening, I realized, success means to open myself to life. Success means to say YES and leap into the unknown, because in that practice, I strengthen my ability to TRUST in the divine, to trust that whatever it is I am being called to, is in fact the heart-opened state I want to live in.

Our society raises us on intellectualization. I am willing to come out and say that I LOVE to psychoanalyze, to think to make sense of something, to rationalize. But what I’m realizing is that this is actually a means of escapism. This is yet another way that we decide not to trust, this is yet another way that we over-calculate, causing us to not make a move.

Have you ever had a moment where an idea pops into your head? Maybe it feels like a crazy idea, you don’t even know how it got there, but it also seems like a good idea, maybe a bit risky and out of your comfort zone, but you realize something is there worth pursuing. In the first moment that the idea is channeled, we might feel excited, intrigued! And then, as always, our rational mind comes in filling up the next moments with analysis, dubiousness, indecisiveness, rationalization….Which usually results in blocks and throwing the idea away. I’m not saying that every idea needs to be pursued, but we must realize that living a “successful” life is filled with risks, with possibilities, with craziness, with trusting the unknown. That the same place (or force) that the idea came from is the one carrying and supporting us to pursue it.

What I see in my life is that every time I turn something down, I am saying NO to life. You’re right, not everything is worth saying yes to, but the yes’s that arise, that my heart becomes excited about, the ideas that come through that feel like they put me on the edge of excitement and fear, those are worth pursuing. Those are the ones that make a life worth living. Those are the ideas that make my life a success because I was willing to jump from that plane in the sky and see what happens. Those are the ideas that make me come alive, make me believe in possibility, help me trust in the unseen.

So….what’s a spark that’s landed on your kindling that needs tending to?

Love,
Gavrila Nikhila