Relationships, Jobs & The Lies We Told Ourselves

Last week I was listening to a podcast about leadership and this speaker gets on, starts talking about this idea of ‘chasing failure’, and in that moment, I realized I had been running from failure. Give me three minutes, and I'll explain. I’ve been looking for a job, so I’m on indeed, scrolling through applications, seeking a job that would be challenging but a right fit; yet, when I came across just that, I found myself scrolling past, having subtle thoughts of doubt, thinking “how I could possibly do something like that, and if I could, for how long?” Now, I want to preface by saying i’ve typically been a yes person, thinking I could do just about anything I put my hand to, but somewhere along the lines, I had let fear of failure and my past dictate not what I was capable of, but what I allowed myself to believe I was capable of. If this story had a clear line from where it started to now, I wouldn't go back four years to better explain how this happened, but it doesn’t and I have too.

I had been working for five years, at a company where I handled all the design, videography, filming, etc., etc., etc.… In some ways, and in some years, I was touted and brought in front of my peers as someone of excellence and excellent value. However, near the end of my time there, I found myself doing a horrible job and missing deadlines with twenty percent of the workload for which I had been paraded in front of my peers as the model employee. This was a result of distraction and poor emotional self-management, topics for another day. But the key ingredient to this tale is the fact that I was replaced suddenly at a job where I found more than my workload, but my value. I was the performer, the hard worker, the get-it-done guy. However, somehow, by the end of my time there, I had become the replaced guy.

I met with my bosses at the time, and after we spoke, they gave me an ultimatum: either take the department back over and try again or not and In that moment, I ran. I left the job I worked for, the department I ran, the state I lived in, and moved back to St. Louis with a fresh failure on my chest.

Now, fast forward four years, I'm listening to Ryan Leak and realizing that the resumés that excited me the most, I was skipping over because I hadn't let go of the Charles that failed in that time of my life. I had let a fail become a failure, and it stayed with me. This feeling would start to seep into the jobs I'd work on, the people I'd say yes to, all the while thinking silently to myself, “How long can I keep a success going in this though?”

I wanted to see a proven track record from myself, to believe in myself. But the person who has to see themselves succeed before they can succeed will wait forever because learning from the relationships you screwed up on, the jobs you let down, and the lies we told ourselves are the ways we grow. The only time we stop growing is when we take a failure and make it an identity.