Dancing with Failure: When Giving up is Okay
Hello my Moons
Giving up is often seen as being synonymous with failure. There is this perception that if you give up, you are somehow giving up on EVERYTHING and facing a life of ruin and misery. But when we think of it, is giving up not really just part of the process of making things, pursuing excellence, and being happy?
As a self employed artist, my career has been chock-full of little failures. From paintings that I hated to products that did not sell, people who did not follow through, shows that went terribly wrong and even an entire career path as a tattoo artist that I only THOUGHT I wanted. And so much more in between. So how do we give up on the RIGHT things, and start being okay with failure as a practice of success?
I actually gave up on the first version of this piece I created in 2016 and completely restarted it. I was so happy I did because I felt like I had so much more knowledge of where I wanted to go with it on the second try!
Allowing ourselves to learn from mistakes and even to give up is tough and can feel very self-deprecating. But stubbornly holding onto something that is absolutely not working, or worse, never trying in the first place, is far more detrimental to our pursuits.
For me at least, having been through so many little failures has taught me to embrace them. They still hurt, but I have come to expect them. Not in the way that I think everything I do will fail, but in the way that when I plan a project, I accept that there will be challenges and I try to plan for them. These challenges often give strength to my projects. However, I also leave room for the knowledge that some things cannot be planned for. And when those come along, I have to evolve my ideas, give up on some of them, and readapt.
From changing displays, products, and even learning to better interact with people, failed shows have been some of my ultimate teachers!
Allowing for difficulty can open our mind. It can help us acclimate to situations we might not otherwise have been prepared for if we had it easy the entire time. If we make a piece of art that we hate, we can use the knowledge of what went wrong to study our weaknesses and improve for future pieces. If we do a show that is massively disappointing, we can examine the circumstances and have a better understanding for future shows. The examples go on, but understanding that mistakes are normal, and that giving up on smaller portions of a project does not equal giving up on everything, is SO important.
When I feel dissatisfied or challenged by ideas, I often try to practice them more heavily, even knowing I will likely fail a few times before getting them right. These quick cloud studies were based on some dissatisfaction I had been having with the clouds in my work.
If you, reading this, are in the process of learning something, you have probably been met with struggles. What if after your first watercolor, which you might have hated, you just gave up and never painted again? Maybe you would not care. But maybe you would miss painting. So what if instead, you made that same painting, got some feedback on what was wrong, and used that feedback to practice your weaknesses, and accepted the fact that you are a flawed and beautiful living being who is LEARNING and has to fail in order to understand what success looks like?
I really believe that most success cannot exist without some failure along the way. And giving up is a close friend of failure. If we can learn to get along with them, they really can strengthen our foundations and further our goals.
Keep learning and failing and succeeding my friends! I will be right there with you!
~Aria
