Permission to Fail

lifechallenge mindsetchallenge May 24, 2019

It's been about a month since I posted a mindset challenge on social media. Guess what?

I failed. There's a cardinal rule in digital marketing - you need to be consistent with your content. I wasn't, oh well. I was on a roll for a couple of months, and then last month I wasn't. I got inundated with more work for my business. This is a good thing, but I was also in a little funk about other aspects of life. As a result, I didn't keep up in writing my posts. I told myself it was ok and knew I would pick it back up. I learned from it because I realized that putting out this content takes a lot of my time, and now I need to make it more efficient. I might fail again, but at least I'm still doing it.

Failure in work was never an issue for me. That's why I've been able to accomplish a lot in business. I always keep it moving, knowing that I'll get back on track. There's still something to learn, and there's always another opportunity to correct my path.

However, failure in other aspects of life like relationships, lifestyle changes, etc. always worried me. Once I started giving myself permission to fail in other areas of life, it made making these changes easier.

I did this when I started swimming laps in 2012. Sometimes I didn't swim for a week or swam only a few days. I permitted myself to fail at being consistent and then kept at it on my own schedule. Now I am an open water swimmer and do mile races in the ocean. It's something I never thought I would do, and it's one of my favorite evolutions in life.

Give yourself permission to be imperfect and fail. Success is not a straight line upward. It's wobbly, but if you keep at it, you'll go further than you ever imagined.

Arathi Ramappa is a certified executive coach, certified spiritual life coach, speaker, and management consultant who helps individuals thrive in life and business. Using the concepts of emotional intelligence, self-compassion, and mindfulness, Arathi has helped clients start their own businesses, develop leadership skills, diminish conflict in relationships, implement positive behaviors, and increase confidence.

Arathi offers one-on-one coaching and emotional intelligence and conscious principles workshops to organizations. She created the EASE approach to help others Explore, Analyze, Strengthen, and Empower their thinking to identify and conquer obstacles to success and change their lives and businesses.

With twenty years of experience in business management coupled with certifications in coaching and emotional intelligence, Arathi’s background as a serial entrepreneur and a veteran in the start-up space has provided her with extensive cross-functional knowledge that she can apply to any situation or client. She has managed teams globally in places such as India, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, Taiwan, Eastern Europe, as well as the U.S., and has worked with a wide range of clients including from the financial, healthcare, cybersecurity, and fashion industries, among others.