Skip to main content

Stamina

They say bounce back. I crash. Hard. Loud. Messy. No elegant arc back to my feet, no motivational soundtrack swelling behind me. I don’t fail well. There’s no effortless recovery, no poised resilience. When I fail, it’s messy. I don’t dust myself off and move on with newfound wisdom. I wallow. I obsess. I replay the misstep until it morphs into something bigger proof of my inadequacy, not just a human error.

I don’t fail gracefully. I don’t pop back up with a smile and a lesson in hand. I sulk. I spiral. I scroll LinkedIn and convince myself everyone else is soaring while I’m face first in a metaphorical pothole. I get that failure is a teacher, a steppingstone, a character builder, blah, blah,blah. But in the thick of it, none of that matters. It feels like a verdict. The rational part of me knows better, but the louder voice insists this isn’t just a stumble, it’s who I am. Shame takes over, amplifying the mistake until it drowns out everything else. It dredges up past failures, convincing me they’re all connected.

Some people seem built for resilience. They take the hit, learn the lesson, and come back stronger. I don’t bounce, I crash. It takes time to pick myself up, to quiet the noise, to remember failure isn’t the end. I crawl until I find my footing again. But maybe the crawl counts. Maybe not failing well is still failing forward. Because I’m still here. Still trying. Still showing up, flawed, frustrated, learning the hard way.

I don’t shrug it off or journal about the lesson. I fall hard and shame spiral harder. It’s not just that I messed up. It’s that I am the mess up. That’s how the voice in my head frames it. Failure doesn’t land on the situation, it lands on me. And once shame takes the mic? It hosts the whole damn show. It reruns the mistake over and over. It pulls up the highlight reel of every other fumble. It whispers that everyone saw it. It screams that everyone remembers.

Spirals are tricky to navigate. I rewrite the moment a hundred ways. I start questioning things that have nothing to do with the original mistake. Was I ever really good at this? Meanwhile, people are out here saying, “Fail fast! Fail forward! Failure’s a gift!” Okay. Then please take this gift back, this one came with a side of identity crisis.

Some folks bounce back with a vengeance. I bounce like a bowling ball, loud, ungraceful, and mostly hoping I don’t knock too many things over on the way down. But here’s what I’ve learned, even if I don’t fail well, I eventually stop spiraling. Even if shame shows up first, it doesn’t get the last word. Even if it takes a while, I get back up maybe not polished, but more honest.

And maybe that’s the point. Not to become someone who never spirals, but someone who doesn’t unpack and live there. I remember failure builds character. Okay mine’s still under renovation. I’m learning that the crash doesn’t mean it’s over. And not bouncing right away doesn’t mean I’m broken. It just means I’m human.

I don’t fail well. But I’ve got stamina. And shame can’t outlast someone who refuses to stay down.

ღ Chi

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hit the Damn Reset Button. Your Brain is Begging You To

Let’s get real for a minute we are not robots. We are not meant to grind for eight plus hours a day, five days a week, fueled by caffeine and denial, pretending Teams notifications aren’t slowly eating our souls. Yet here we are burnt out, over-meetinged, and holding it together with the classic “Sorry, I was on mute.”  Newsflash : it is not fine. Think of it like restarting your Wi-Fi when the connection sucks. You don’t just keep hitting refresh you unplug it, wait ten seconds, and let it reboot. Your brain needs the same damn courtesy.  You are not broken you are just overdue for a mental reset. And what the hell is a mental reset, anyway? It’s not a vacation (though those help). It’s not quitting your job in a blaze of glory (tempting, I know). A mental reset is a pause.. short or long…that gives your brain room to breathe, stretch, and stop spiraling into existential dread every time someone says, “Quick question…”  Let’s blame hustle culture for making breaks feel l...
2 comments
Read more

Expectation Bomb

I want to talk about the expectation bomb. Do you know it? Clearly stated, uncommunicated expectations are pre planned resentments. (say it again for the people in the back)  And if you are clutching your pearls at that, you are probably the one who needed to hear it. We have all been there, seething quietly because someone should have known what we needed, expected, or assumed was obvious. But guess what? They did not know. People are not mind readers. They are just trying to survive their own calendar full of back to back Teams meetings, a hundred unread emails, and Susan from comp asking just one quick thing. Here is the truth, expecting people to magically meet standards you never actually told them about is a recipe for disaster. And it is not just annoying; it is toxic. It is workplace sabotage disguised as professionalism. Want that report done your way? Say so. Hoping for help on a project? Ask for it. Need your boss to actually give you real feedback instead of vague thumb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fuel The Flame

Forget the org chart. Toss the employee handbook. There is a raw, unscripted kind of magic at work no one tells you about. It is not necessarily your boss or your direct report it is your ride or die. This is the one who speaks your chaos fluently, deciphers your frantic shorthand like it is poetry, and fires back a "YUP. Saw that too" Teams message before you exhale.  They are the voice defending you in rooms you will never enter.  They are not just supportive they are catalytic. Throw you two in a room and you can’t be tamed. You bring the fuel they bring the detonator. Kaboom. This is not about climbing ladders it is about lighting up the hallway as you walk it.    Whether they are on your team or in another department, they are the one who sees your vision, challenges your ideas into something sharper, and tells you do it when you float something wild. They do not slow you down  they set you on fire (in the best way). You will know your ride or die when your...
Post a Comment
Read more