While in the shower, the voices talk to me. And they say to me thusly…
“Psst.”
To which I reply, without missing a beat,
“I’ve not touched a drop. It’s five in the flipping morning.”
And after a little toing and froing of this kind, because I’m not above winding the voices up by deliberately misconstruing their meaning, they eventually get down to business.
“How do you deal with failure?”
“Failure is not a word in my vocabulary.”
“Well, you should try reading a dictionary. It’s right there between fabulous and fuck.”
Even my voices are capable of a little sass when they’re tired in the morning.
That is pretty much word for word my inner monologue this morning, and it got me thinking. It got me thinking about failure. Failure to live up to one’s targets, failure to achieve the standards aimed for, and failure to keep one’s Lenten resolutions.
How do I deal with failure?
First step: Never admit failure. This is why I am not telling anyone that I didn’t manage to keep to my Lenten resolution of going for a run every day. If anyone asks, I’m telling them that I wrote my blog every day, and a McDonalds did not cross my lips until Easter Sunday, when in glorious celebration of our Lord rising from the tomb, I had a double sausage McMuffin. I even rolled it away.
Second step: Reframe the failure as an alternate success. This has seen some great successes in the news recently. By redefining the parameters of the original resolution, it can look like success, despite being an utter failure. Repeat after me: I wanted to run every day, because I wanted to do more exercise. I am walking large distances about the city every day. Therefore, I am doing the exercise I wanted, and so, therefore, I do not need to do a run for it to be a success. I’m telling you, I missed my calling as a lawyer… That’s some high level linguistic jiggery-pokery right there…
Having explained the second step, thereby stripping away the magic from the process, I shall advance to the third step. If there is no way to ignore the failure or to reframe it, pass the buck. As a result of diary management processes, cuts have had to be made in the Lenten resolutions department. Unless I can receive an increases in budgeted hours per day of… oooh… call it twenty percent, I cannot feasibly carry out all the tasks allocated. Great pity all round, running hours very important, yadda yadda yadda, will look into pursuing this at a later date, if and when allocated diary space allows.
If all of the above fails, we fall back on step four, described by Sir Humphrey Appleby as Operation Hairshirt, but pursued with rather more gusto. Did you ever watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Do you remember the monks, with the short planks of wood? That’s step four. Hit yourself over the head with a plank until the feeling of failure leaves you. Beat it out of yourself. And then, move on to the next failure.
“There. How I deal with failure. Do you think that was a success…?”
“You carefully maneuvered around the question and completely avoided it! How can that be a success?”
Sometimes, the voices can be a little tetchy…
“Well, with all things overlooked and categorized, and the process reviewed for next time, addressing the content in its most exacting form, I’d say that overall, I managed to quite successfully explore the general themes around the question put forth today. And if you’re still inclined to encourage me to castigate myself for not achieving one of my three Lenten resolutions, I would just like to refer you to the facts that I have only one hour allocated to writing every morning, and with that hour nearly up, there is no time available to reassess the situation today. Today’s missive will have to go forth as is, and any edits and omissions corrected at a later date. If you would like me to rectify this with more exactitude at this present moment, then I would have to apply for a doubling of the temporal budgetary processes allocated to blog writing. I trust that that is all clear?”
“…”
I like it when the voices in my head are lost for words…