I think my biggest lesson about failure came when I got divorced.
I had stayed in my marriage and even had a second child all the while knowing it was an abysmal relationship. I clung to the good times for dear life and minimized the reality of what I was actually getting out of the relationship. I just knew that if he would change everything would be peachy!!! I worked every angle to get him to change. And man, I had a lot of angles (thanks Mom and Dad!!).
Admitting to myself and my family and my kids that the marriage was over was, at first, devastating to me. I really thought I had failed. The word failure came up over and over again in conversations. I sank very low in my mind.
I think the thing that finally allowed me to embrace this "failure" was the relief I felt that it was over. It was a huge acceptance thing. I realized that just staying together in a lousy marriage was not a success!! That would be a worse failure. And since our marriage simply could not have been a success I had to accept the failure. Would I want to ride in a rocket ship that really didn't work correctly? Or would I rather know it had a systems failure and take it apart and start again???
So I guess I came to accept failure as necessary.
And my divorce has been so very successful. It's crazy but I swear to God!! My boys are decent relatively untroubled human beings full of warmth and love. I get along fine with my ex and his wife and their daughter (I even babysit her on occasion). He can still drive me cuckoo just like any "family member" but I deal.
It was accepting failure that was hard for me. I would say in all my recovery and therapy work accepting reality always has to come first for me, and never comes easily (hmmmmmmm? wonder why? child of alcoholic maybe?? ;-)
I work hard to succeed at whatever I'm attempting - but I accept failure, especially if I tried (I'm not even gonna say "tried my best" because that isn't always the case nor always possible!) but if I tried hard and failed - well so be it. Acceptance. Onwards and upwards!
Peace-
B.