Failure

I love helping people on their journey to healthy eating. I adore writing and sharing recipes with people all over the world and helping everyone see how tasty real food can be.


Being in contact with so many people on Facebook, and Twitter and Instagram, I see a lot of posts about "failing" at FMD. That word makes me sad- FAIL. So, I was thinking about it. And I got sorta philosophical about it. Is it truly failing? How do you fail? What is the meaning of life? - whoops, my brain went off on it's own tangent there. Bring it back in, Carolyn!


Failure.


So, let's say you start a new job. Do you go in the first day and just work? Probably not. There is likely a training period of some sort. Maybe days, maybe minutes, maybe months long. You find out what email goes where and to whom. You learn what report needs to be done and when, and how. You learn where to find information, or how share information, or how to fix things, analyze stuff. You learn. If you run your daily report at the wrong time, are you a failure? Do you get fired? Let's hope not. Do you throw you arms up and walk out of the job? Do you quit? No. That would be ridiculous. You simply learn from that mistake and find ways to not make it again. You write a calendar reminder, or a post it note on your computer.


If you are in school, and are learning math. You solve a problem but your answer is wrong. Do you drop out of college and move into your mom's basement? No, that would be ridiculous. You find out how to get to the correct answer, see where your mistake was and move on. You continue to live in your apartment, buy your own groceries, study hard.You learn from it.


If you take a trip and don't listen to your husband tell you where to turn to get to your destination, do you just give up and go home? Call off the trip? Just say, "screw it all" and don't even try to get on the right track? Or do you pull up Google Maps on your phone and figure out how to get back on course and enjoy that trip to St Pete Beach?


Just because you start to eat healthy and one day a cookie or two find their way into your hands, then into your mouth doesn't mean you are a failure. It means you like cookies, and I see nothing wrong with that. If you eat the wrong food on the wrong day, or you wake up one day and you just cannot look another celery stick or slice of Ezekiel Bread in the face, are you a failure? Nah- you are human. Or maybe your coworkers ask you out for drinks one random Tuesday and you had dinner planned in your head, and whoa! this is throwing me off but I will go... and you go and you see everyone enjoying an adult beverage. So you order one. Are you a failure? No, you are a good co-worker and friend.


We, as women, have been taught that if you do something wrong, we fail. Society has us believing if we aren't a size 2, we are not attractive and fail. If we don't wear the right clothes, we are failing at life. Men have us thinking we need to hold down a job AND maintain a household, AND raise the children and we can't, we fail. Other women have us feeling that if we don't cook everything from scratch, with one breastfeeding baby on a hip, another at the table writing his first book at age 3 and keeping an immaculate house, while wearing designer yoga pants and sipping Starbucks we are a failure.


Stop being so hard on yourself. You aren't failing. You are living. Don't give up. Move on. Do the Taylor Swift thing and shake it off, and continue. Learn from your mistake. How did you make it? Find that why and fix it. Try not to repeat it, and if you do, find another way. Keep searching and asking questions, and trying and trying and trying. You only fail when you stop trying.