What has been your biggest failure in life? Come on, admit it!!!

[Butterfly]

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how unhappy I feel.  A lot has to do with a feeling of personal failures in my life.  For me, that's what kills my spirit and sucks the life out of me and prevents me from living in the moment. Like a big, heavy weight I carry around in my waking hour all day. 

I'll go first.  The biggest failure in my life is worrying too much about what others may think of me and underestimating the greed and ambitions of others.  I'm too trusting of people, I feel.  Alright, those are two things.

How about you?  What's your biggest failure???

[Sela]

Dear Butterfly:

I've had many personal failures in my life, which is part of growing and learning, but the biggest one?  Probably allowing myself to think of myself as failing.

I trust people a lot and now, I don't think that is a failure.  They have failed me by not being trustworthy.

I have worried about what others think but now....it's not my failure but theirs to think good things and be supportive.  I do that for others so it's their failure, not mine, if they don't do the same.

I have underestimated the greed and ambition of others but I no longer think of this as my failure to detect stuff.  I'm not greedy nor do I have nasty ambitions so the people who do have those are failing to have good intentions.   I  no longer expect myself to mind read/have psychic knowledge about other people's stuff.  I expect them to be honest and when they aren't....they are the ones failing.

I am disappointed in a number of people who have failed me, personally, and taken advantage of my honesty and trusting nature.  I don't intend to change because I believe it's good to be honest and trust in the good.

I'm sorry that these things are killing your spirit and sucking the life out of you and preventing you from living in the moment.  There's nothing wrong with trying to be good, trying to behave well, trying to trust.  The failure isn't yours, imo, it belongs to those who fail to see the benefit of those things and who fail to try to achieve them.

And they haven't just failed you or I....they've failed themselves.

Sela

[Awen]

 I failed to heed my intuition when it told me, just before talking my wedding vows, "this is the biggest mistake you will ever make in your life."  Now when that little voice in my head tells me something, I know I better trust that it is right!

Ariel

[Brigid]

Hi Butterfly,
I would agree with Sela that having, what I consider the good qualities of trusting and believing in others and finding that people take advantage of that, not to be a failure on your part, but on theirs.  If you could never get to the point of being able to trust again. . . which takes a great deal of healing and rebuilding. . . then that might be a failure on your part, imo.

If you had asked my this question even 6 months ago, I'm quite sure my answer would be different, but as of today, I think my biggest failure is not having enough faith in myself, not feeling worthy of doing things just for myself, not having the courage to find my self.  I have spent my entire adult life (and probably much of my childhood as well) caregiving others and seeing that as my role in life.  I can see now that raising dogs for 20 years followed by raising kids for 20 years (there was some overlap in there--I'm not THAT old  ) kept me from caretaking myself in lieu of caretaking helpless animals and children.  All that caretaking was a good thing and I did a good job, but I did not include myself in the equation.  Now I'm left with trying to figure out how to do that at 55 and it is a bit overwhelming.

I hope that 5 years from now (with any luck, sooner than that), I will no longer consider this to be a failure on my part and I will have conquered the beast.

Brigid

[daylily]

My biggest failure, by far, has been the failure of nerve.  I have never attached myself to a goal and pursued it, believing that I had at least as much of a chance as anyone else to attain it.  Instead, I have done what seemed safe and, all things considered, easy.  Except for my marriage, in which I made a genuinely good choice, I feel as though my life has lived me, rather than the other way around.

Middle age is breathing hard on the back of my neck, and I'm very, very scared that things will never be any different.  I know that only I can make this happen, but right now, I'm sort of defeated by the meta-issue of motivation, if you know what I mean.  Where does one find it?  How come some people have it and some don't?  Can you really fire the personal coach of self-defeat who's always murmuring in your ear?

Good question.

Best,
daylily

[Butterfly]

Sela,

To a degree, you've help taken the blinders from my eyes.

Thank you for doing that ,
Butterfly

[bunny]

If I think about my failures, I might get suicidal. So I don't go that route. What I work on in therapy is persecutory feelings and massive guilt. And it's probably going to be a lifetime process.

bunny

[Butterfly]

Bunny said:
If I think about my failures, I might get suicidal. So I don't go that route.

Understood!  I admire you for your will power to steer your thoughts in the direction you want it to go.  I wish I could say the same about me.  For me, thinking about my failures is as uncontrollable as a starving person trying not to think about food.

Portia said:
What does a budgie without a beak do?  Succeeds.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't get it.

About what people think of you: they’re too busy thinking about themselves. They really are! Ask them about themselves and just listen. You’ll forget about yourself and your worry about what they think. You’ll be amazed at how people don’t think about you! And that can set you free to be who you want to be. You have great potential butterfly, we all do! We’re not that different to each other underneath either. We all have similar fears.

Thanks for the reminder, Portia!  Sometimes the truth is hidden in plain sight.  The plank in my eyes prevented me from seeing it.

I think you’re cool. 

Thanks for having a pleasant thought about me   I reckon that's a cool thought.   If only I believe that was true, then I would really be cool   .

[write]

one of the difficulties for me, especially having bipolar, is mood swings, extremes.
Everything's wonderful or everything's awful...

Since I got that under control I don't feel like a failure, and I'm even forgiving myself for the crazy things I've said and done when I've been ill.

So I guess that's my biggest failure, not to understand and treat the bipolar; I lived most of my adult life walking a knife edge because of it.

[October]

Whatever it might be, I hope it is behind me, and not still to come.

I think my marriage was my worst failure.  Followed by my failure to find work in time five years ago, before the depression hit so hard that I was unable to do so. 

After that there could be many more, but this is not a good place for me to visit.

My biggest success is having my daughter, and still being alive.

[bliz1]

College was my biggest failure or regret, I guess you would say. I was pretty smart and went to a good school.  All my issues came crashing down around me in college.   I was pretty screwed up for a pretty long time and surprisingly managed to graduate.  I can see now what a great experience college could have been for me, if I had been healthy.  I really cant blame myself, although I am sure I did for years.  It was naturally going to happen eventually,  (the fruition of my dysfunctional upbringing.) I was finally able to go back and make peace with the experience, apologize to those I hurt etc.  It's a well known school and for years I couldnt even think about the school or relate to it at all because of the shame.

[Sallying Forth]

My biggest failure is not trusting my intuition.

However this is also my biggest success because the more I see that my intuition was right on, the more I listen to it.

Without failure I would not know success.

[Stormchild]

My greatest failure is that I am utterly unable to obtain support from people when I need it most.

I do not think I have admitted openly on this board that I am a cyclic depressive - because I myself only realized this recently. There is always a trigger, the episodes are never entirely spontaneous, so it's been hard to recognize their cyclic nature. I can become suicidal, and when this occurs, I sound quite negative, sometimes terribly offensive. I don't mean profanity, I mean absolute, Marianas Trench-deep negativity and despair...

Invariably, people then either ignore me completely (if I am expressing profound pain) or attack me for making them feel bad (if I am expressing profound negativity). Now and then I get attacked when I express pain... apparently when someone feels that I'm trespassing on their turf, and they own the exclusive rights to feel bad about X.

I honestly can't recall a single instance of anyone first asking themselves... how I[/i] must feel, to be expressing myself in such terms... and then asking me. [This is not an exaggeration or distortion, I honestly have never experienced it. It must require a nearly superhuman level of detachment, and I am not being sarcastic.]

I don't generally announce the suicidality. I'm usually fighting it tooth and nail and trying to keep it down. That is my own personal quirk, and not an implied or intended criticism of those who are more able to name their demons while grappling with them. In fact, I envy people who can openly say - I am feeling X now - instead of just showing what they feel, as I do, through other words.

Before everyone rushes to tell me that I can always come here, I must tell you that what I am describing has happened to me here, out in the open and more than once. It is the primary reason I stopped posting anything really self-disclosing, emotionally, here. Fortunately, I am very stubborn and pigheaded, so when I am suicidally depressed -- and people attack me when I need support -- that just makes me all the more determined to live.

Hellish survival system, though, isn't it. I really need to find a better way.

And yes, I am, right now, or I wouldn't sound this way. Have been, most of this week. But it has already bottomed out, and it isn't going to win this time, either. And I guess the fact that it hasn't won yet must be my greatest success.

[October]

And yes, I am, right now, or I wouldn't sound this way. Have been, most of this week. But it has already bottomed out, and it isn't going to win this time, either. And I guess the fact that it hasn't won yet must be my greatest success.

<Sitting beside you and listening. 

With a cup of tea and a packet of Chocolate Digestives.  And a girly film or two for when we want to chill.>

(And scuba stuff borrowed from next door neighbour, in case of expedition to that trench.)

xxx

[Brigid]

Stormy,

I'm sorry for your pain of late.  Sending prayers and hugs.

((((((((stormy)))))))))

Brigid