About Failure and Happiness

WHAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY?

This was a job interview question I used recently. I asked all the candidates who sat across the table from me, what will their paradise look like? Billion dollars, family, dream career ... what exactly will make you happy? Only the candidate with the right answer to this question (which we all agree is completely unrelated to the role applied for) got the job. We were recruiting for a multinational and it was a senior management position. We've gone through at least 200 applications and anyone who had made it to top 5 can do the job really. We needed more than book or boardroom smart to decide who it will be. We needed someone who has a grip on their life.

The biggest gift you can give yourself is self-awareness. The ability to be present, to get into your consciousness and also step aside without judging anything. It took a while, a very long while but I'm finally here. At the place where I am less afraid, where nothing external defines failure or success for me, where I'm not bothered about pleasing others, where I notice the details around me and acknowledge what it is that I am grateful for right then, in that moment.

In moments of intense emotion I'm learning to stay aware, to breathe deeply and acknowledge my body sensations. This does not abate grief or dampen joy, but helps me to integrate those emotions rather than avoid them. There is no room for fear in the moment (in the now) —fear can only exist in the future. So I allow my happiness find expression.

We are creatures of love. There's no fear in love. What will it take and what are you willing to give to let go of fear. Our lives though impermanent is already perfect if we look through the right lenses. We must get to the place of clarity and become focused on being present to truly enjoy life. The world's definition of perfection is flawed and very much a fleeting mirage. To look in the mirror, to see someone worthy and already complete is the first step in the journey towards happiness. There are depressed billionaire, suicidal beauty queens and unhappy family people. So all these can't be the answer. To know and be aware of your conscious state is the first step to living a whole life. That place where you know what you feel, want, or want to become but also know that none of those things are who you are and neither do they define your existence.

My to-do list is now full of things that further my dreams and my relationships are more intimate, vulnerable, challenging and loving. There’s nothing to be afraid of; death is certain. The only way to honor that end is to be present today and disregard any criteria that measures success or failure.

If you're struggling and in a bad place, these excerpt of J.K. Rowling’s (author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series) speech, delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in 2008 will bless you just as it blessed me beyond words.

“Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

With all my love.