Solidarity Sister! is a gathering podcast for women. We empower listeners with practical tools for building powerful communities and leaning in through both joy and trauma. We weren't meant to do life alone.
How do you feel about failure? Have you learned how to use failure for your good? Learn about a fatherhood reel I watched this week and the naysayer that caused me to reflect on how I'm viewing failure and the failure culture I want to model for my kids.
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Kristin:
Hello and welcome to another mini sode of Solidarity Sister with Kristin Wilson. And this week's little mini sode lesson is a reminder of the value of failure in fact, people who are known as being wildly successful experience failure more often because they are willing to try more often because they do more things because then they learn from those failures and they move forward. And so often we get caught in these loops of failure. of expecting ourselves to be perfect and having these expectations that are so unrealistic that we cannot meet up to. And so it's paralyzing. The perfection paralysis is a real thing. There's even old sayings that kind of support that notion. You know, anything worth doing is worth doing right. And you know, if you can't do it right, it's not worth doing well, sometimes actually doing the thing 20 percent is so much more than zero. Even though it wasn't a hundred percent. I was reminded of this concept today because I saw a post on Facebook where this dad shared a reel about Realizing he was becoming really disconnected from his kids and from the video. It looked like he had five or six kids so Definitely a larger family by regular American standards. Not as large as our family, but definitely a larger family. And so he made this commitment to his kids to go on these weekly daddy walks. And he would take the children one by one on a daddy walk and just listen to them. And I think that's so beautiful that one, he recognized the disconnect and two, he made a plan to work on that and to bridge that gap. And it is difficult when you have a lot of children to plan for one on one time. So I think that was just really an inspired thought. And I loved that he was sharing it to encourage people because that can happen to the best of well intentioned parents where we realize we are not having those one on one important conversations and creating safety to increase the power of the relationship that we have with our children. And what a great message to send out. Well then there was this one woman, and I am not going to call her a Karen, although many people would. And she basically said, I can't believe you would celebrate this. What a failure of a dad. My husband and I have one child. She didn't say it in these words, but my husband and I prioritize our daughter over all things. And we are having these kinds of meaningful conversations with her every day. And the tone of it was just so shaming and belittling and just. really did not sit well with me. But interestingly enough, who I felt the sorriest for in this whole situation was this woman's daughter because the voice of that mom was one of shame and judgment and belittling of trying to point out. What can she considered a failure and harping on it? And if that's the energy that she's putting into the internet, that is likely the energy she's putting onto herself for her own mistakes and the way that her inner self talk works. And it's likely the energy that she's putting out into her home. And even if she doesn't see it, say those words specifically to her daughter, she probably criticizes people around her in that same fashion, and her daughter's probably hearing it. And what that does is it creates an environment where it isn't okay to fail, and it isn't okay to learn, and it isn't okay to have improvement. It's only okay to just do it. Do it right and be perfect. And maybe I'm extrapolating. I don't know this woman from her one comment. Maybe this was totally out of character for her to say something like this. And that is not how she normally shows up. I do want to leave space for that because I really don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was the scenario. And so I was just thinking, how can I do a better job of celebrating The process that this father went through, and I don't know from this one internet post how good of a dad he really is, and that's really not my place to judge either. But what I do want to pull out is this principle that he recognized a deficiency in himself. And he made an effort to move forward on it. And that is really the crux of what we should be striving for as humans. It's being able to identify, this isn't working, or this isn't, this isn't me showing up in alignment with the way that my values are. How do I change this? And making subtle shifts. You know, he didn't take his kids to Disney World and get a Disney pass and he didn't buy a boat and like do like, he didn't do big things. He didn't do expensive things. He made time for one walk a week per kid. It was small. It was doable. It was obtainable. And it was free. It was the cost of his time and his energy, but it wasn't even something that would cost any money. He didn't say I started taking them out to ice cream. He does these daddy walks. And I would love to do more of fostering that kind of a culture of failing forward. When we recognize our failure, we try again and we tweak it. There is a scene in the Meet the Robinsons movie, which this is one of my favorite movies of all time. As far as children's movies go, I, I love this one, but there's a scene Where the main character creates another version of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich maker thing and he's with his future family and I honestly can't remember at this moment if he's realized they're his future family yet or not, but He sprays this peanut butter and jelly gun thing. And instead of going where it's supposed to, it like literally goes everywhere and everyone's covered in peanut butter and jelly and he immediately starts apologizing because of the past experiences that he's had where people were really hard on him for making mistakes like that. And he's like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And, and the family is like, what? Like, You failed. This is awesome. And they're celebrating him and they're celebrating that he tried and they're sharing with him their own failed experiences, which is so beautiful and so in line with the Brene Brown principles of life. But where they're saying like, I tried this and it didn't work, but then eventually I got this working. And then the grandpa guy is like, well, I created these fireproof pants and then they're like on fire. And then they disintegrate and he's like, Well, I'm still working on them. You know, it's a work in progress. And then there's a line from another character who says from failure, we learn much from success, not so much. And so the thing that I want to leave with you is that, that phrase from Meet the Robinsons. It's kind of the motto, which is keep moving forward. And the rest of the message is to lean into those failures. Even celebrate those failures. Figure out what you can learn from those failures and keep moving forward. And also do that for the people around you. Do that for your children. Do that for your co workers. I like to use the phrase when I feel like I'm being really negative with myself and my own personal self talk about how poorly I'm doing in a certain area to say instead I've identified an area for growth. There's so much more hope in those words than there is to say I'm never going to get this right. I'm failing as a mother. I can't pull my house together. I can't get this work project done. I can't whatever. Flip that. I've identified an area for growth. That's where the growth comes. It comes from recognizing those failures, being willing to take the steps that led to the failure in the first place. And then to learn from those failures and keep moving forward. That is really such a key to success. And that's why successful people fail so much. It's because they try so often. So, They are going to experience failure more often as well, but with all those failures, they are learning and they are growing. And that is what is leading them to that ongoing success. So, let's celebrate your failures today. If you have any wild, wildly successful failures you want to share with me, please connect with me on social media. I would love to hear from you. If this is something that resonated with you, or that you think would resonate with a friend or family member, please share it with them, either privately or on your social media. And if you have any ideas for future guests that you'd like to see here or topics covered, please reach out to me as well. Thank you for being part of the Solidarity Sister community. We needed you.
