Soul Care in Work and Life Part 1: Failure

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Benjamin Field, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Tim, a midcareer client in transition, shared how he’d been unsuccessful in a recent job interview, missing out on a desired role because he felt he’d failed to deliver the optimal response to the situational question, “Tell me about a time when you didn’t get along with a co-worker.”

Tim recounted to me how the organization’s hiring team had sent their “regrets” some days later to let him know he’d been unsuccessful. Interesting word choice, I considered. I got curious and asked what he understood by this. It turns out “regrets” is how he’d been taught, as a former hiring manager himself, to articulate rejection. So, now, when he reflects on not getting a role, he likes to think he’s been sent polite regrets which takes the sting out of being rejected. We dug a little deeper and explored what it feels like to be rejected – by a prospective employer, a friend, a lover.

“It feels like failure; as though I’m not good enough,” Tim observed.

This resonated. How many times in my own work and life have I felt myself not to be good enough – lacking in some way? I could hear the “gremlin” (an inner voice that’s self-defeating and critical). His, my own. What C. G. Jung calls the “complex”—a buildup of psychic energy around a common theme—had been activated.

“I’m afraid that I can’t be successful in these interviews if I don’t show up wearing the right mask.” Tim went on.

Now, we were onto something. How many of us feel like we have to put on a mask to navigate work and life?

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, I responded.”

“Yeah. It just feels performative,” Tim lamented.

Two central themes came up from this point: first, the concept of a mastery versus performance mindset; second, the idea of failure as a pathway to mastery (a soul-centered path).

Performance versus mastery
As a Core Energy Coach, I’m trained to draw a distinction between performance and mastery, which is a fundamental dichotomy and central to the idea of how we experience the world. A performance orientation / mindset is characterized by showing up to a situation wedded to an outcome. We do our utmost to perform to our best, but we’re affected by whether we win or lose, whether we’re successful or unsuccessful. Performing can lead to so-called “rewards,” such as getting hired, or some other high achievement, but we can get so caught up in the result, stuck in our heads, unable to show up completely in the moment that, when things don’t go as planned, we’re rocked and drop into a catabolic energy state (one that drains us and creates a negative feedback loop). Performance is synonymous with the will of our ego-consciousness. And, when the outcome doesn’t go the way ego intended, cue the judgment and the resultant energetic dip.

A mastery mindset, on the other hand, is when we show up unattached to outcomes and devoted to the task at hand, knowing that whatever the result, by being in the arena of our life, we’re open to growth through doing. Learning is available and the desire is to develop and grow in the direction of mastery. With a mastery orientation, winning or losing is irrelevant. Playing the game is what it’s all about. Showing up with a mastery mindset puts us into the immediacy of the moment. This is often what athletes describe as “flow state.” Energetically, mastery resonates at a much higher, anabolic level than performance. Hence, a performance mindset is never as powerful as a mastery mindset.

Failure as pathway to soul
“To err is human,” observes the poet, Alexander Pope. Failure is thus a vital human experience. However, in a society that privileges success over failure—winning over losing, growth over regression, light over dark—we miss the soul at work in our perceived failures. And, unless failure is what precedes success—how many times have we heard the hackneyed stories of billionaires who’ve made and lost fortunes to only make even greater fortunes?—we won’t acknowledge its visitation and profoundly helpful impact on our work and life.

“Failure is a mystery, not a problem,” states the depth psychologist, Thomas Moore (Moore, 1992, p. 196). But what are we to do with mystery? Perhaps by placing failure in the realm of mystery it ceases to be a personal problem our rationalistic egos need to solve and, instead, we can encounter something that’s archetypal, an experience that belongs to the collective psyche (to all of us humans).

Failure also can serve as a counterbalance to inflation, when ego is pushing an agenda that’s incongruent with the demands of the soul. When failure visits and pulls us down from the world of spirit—the high realm of ambition—to the low ground of soul (the underworld), a corrective attitude becomes available. An attitude that can save us from disaster, both figurative and literal. Think about how necessary a corrective attitude would have been for those who built and brought to market a submersible intended to visit the underwater gravesite of the Titanic—ironically naming it after the mythic “Titans”—only to have it implode and kill everyone onboard? Thus, failure has something potent to offer us. We must heed its message before it’s too late.

Moreover, there’s inherent value in experiencing failure as it can bring us into deeper relationship with our Opus, the great work of our life. For we must not be afraid to fail, or we’ll never succeed.

Think of Tim and his job interview. If he’s able to sit with and embrace his feelings of failure—rather than wallow in his “I’m not good enough fantasy”—then imagine the new creative life which might emerge as a result.

How will you meet failure when it next comes knocking?