Failure is success in progress.
~~ Albert Einstein
No one wants to ponder failure, let alone admit it. When it comes to the soul’s evolution is it possible to fail? Can the soul actually flunk out?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about failure in my own life. Although many people would look at what I’ve accomplished and see success, I can’t help but focus on the twists and turns that have left me feeling anything but successful. No one would call me lazy and I know I work hard. However, even hard work means nothing if I haven’t learned what I was supposed to along the way.
Lots of people fail many times before they succeed. In fact, it is the experience of disappointment that either makes or breaks us. As Henry Ford said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing”. We only hear of his success as a multimillion dollar business man who revolutionized motor vehicles, but few know he owned two previous auto companies that met their demise early in their process. He also attempted to launch a political career that never took off. Even in his successful auto company, he drug his feet on modernizing his vehicles and lost out to competition who were ready to grow. Finally, he tried his luck in creating a rubber plantation to optimize products for his cars, but this endeavor fell away quickly despite his entrepreneurial genius. Regardless of his fiascos, Ford embraced his botched efforts so he could make himself and his business even better, saying, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
This is the best quote I’ve ever found to describe the process of conscious evolution—taking what you learn from your challenges and turning it into something better.
Back to the question, “Can a soul fail?” The answer lies in our ability to consciously decide whether we are committed to grow, regardless of whether we take a few… or many steps back. As Ford emphasized, we only make mistakes if we fail to learn and in the case of our soul’s evolution, it is all about the decisions we make as humans that allow our innermost self to thrive… or take a dive, depending on which way we go.
As a long-time mental health professional, I know change is difficult. As a soul-healing specialist, I know it takes time. I’ve said many times that evolution never happens as fast as we’d like to and it never happens in a straight line. When it comes to success in moving forward, it is all about how we navigate our failures that ensures movement into a more fruitful state.
I’ve failed many times. I’m certain I will fail again. In a recent conversation with my best friend, I talked about my reflections about how many times I’ve tried something that hasn’t worked out. I lamented about whether moving forward was worth trying at all given what can seem like wasted effort. I’ve spent a lot of time, money and energy attempting to get people to understand the soul enough to put it at the forefront of their intentions. While I’m certain I make a difference in some people’s lives, at the time of our conversation I was at a point that I wondered if it was enough.
Soon after, I experienced a moment when my own words swiftly kicked me in the butt.
I journaled the next morning pondering the same things we spoke about. As the Universe often does, it reminded me to test my concerns against my own Three Questions of Discernment”: It is meaningful? Is it necessary? Does it feed my soul? I asked these questions related to my mission to teach others about the soul. A resounding YES! from all three questions landed on the pages.
My memories of challenging times took me back through a series of failures that led to where I am now. I recalled my time in graduate school when I’d just left an unhealthy marriage and moved to a new apartment to somehow start my life all over again. It happened just as I ended my second year in the doctoral program. I informed my professors of what was happening so they’d understand why I wasn’t performing at my best. I was hitting bottom just when I should have been reaching for the top. I muddled through finishing my dissertation proposal and somehow passed my comprehensive exams, all the while feeling like my life and the future I had envisioned fell apart. Later, the chair of my committee (the group of professors/mentors who see you through many steps toward graduation) told me she didn’t know how I completed that year given everything that was going on. Without thinking, I told her “It wasn’t an option to fail.” In retrospect, I don’t know how I did it either—I just knew I had to keep going.
I then fast-forwarded to leaving a much sought after job as a professor at the medical school—one of only 300 in the nation at the time. I had moved further away from home to take the position, thinking it would be a dream come true as well as a wonderful opportunity to advance my career. After just twelve months, I felt deflated and disillusioned in having made the decision to accept the role. I did everything I could to feel good about what I did there but only felt dismissed and shut down for all the blood, sweat and tears I’d put into the job. Although I was told I was doing well, I was also told by a person in the department that I wasn’t a “real” doctor so I didn’t count. I often felt undermined by others who minimized the importance of behavioral medicine or canceled my scheduled lectures to replace them with more “medical” topics. Why had I thought this was a good idea? What was I thinking? I had no more to give and left the university to start a private practice (which filled within a few weeks and I’ve had a full caseload ever since!). Leaving that position may have confused many, but it provided the opportunity to write books, teach continuing education courses to medical and mental health professionals around the country and do other things I wouldn’t have had time to do had I stayed.
My focus then turned to a time five years later when I decided to close a holistic health center I owned (Branches Holistic Health and Wellness Center). I had eighteen employees ranging from other mental health professionals, a nutritionist, energy worker, massage therapist, yoga/tai chi/Qigong instructors and fitness trainers and other professionals. After four years in operation, I closed the doors knowing once again that I’d spent every ounce of energy I had in creating that place. Had I not opened that center, I would have never created my trademarked Soul Health Model™ which has now been shared to thousands of professionals and the public.
Just a five years ago, The Soul Health Center (a collective of holistic practitioners) quickly dwindled when COVID hit, causing half of the professionals to shut down their businesses and the rest to struggle. Again, my many efforts seemed to fall short. What came of this extra time and space was the opportunity to create my Soul Health Essentials aromatherapy company, write three more books and develop the vision to train others in knowing more about the soul.
Earlier this year, my Soul Health Scholars second offering of a Level One certification didn’t fill, so I had to put the courses on pause to determine what to do next. I’d heard that many courses and trainings around the world were struggling, but I still stepped back to take a look at what went wrong. This forced me to reconsider how I offered the course and expand the options. This resulted in the budding project to create The Soul Healing Institute, a more comprehensive and streamlined approach to training others as well as offering soul-based living webinars for the public. It is possible that this won’t “fly” either, but wherever it leads, I will learn something along the way.
As I reflected on these and other endeavors related to teaching about the soul, I also remembered a CEO of a nationally known author/speaker marketing training program who told me on the first day of a weekend intensive workshop, “You should never talk about the soul—people don’t want to hear about it.” Although at first his comment deflated me, it didn’t take long to recognize that it strengthened my conviction that talking about the soul is EXACTLY what I needed to do. (The funny thing is that his wife said she was fascinated with my topic when we met later that evening at a cocktail gathering.)
One way I definitely know I failed recently is a bit ironic– but I can luckily see the humor in it. All of these years, my worst fear in doing everything I’ve done was to lose my work-life balance. I have always been able to juggle a lot and still find time for self-care and play. However, the perfect storm hit in the last few years and I hunkered down to write and publish two books in just over two years along with launching my Soul Health Scholars Certification. Although I stayed afloat in the process, I didn’t always do my best. Just after the first offering of the certification ended my body crashed. I experienced the worst case of burnout I’d ever had (and am still recovering!) right at the same time that menopause hit. Fatigue, exhaustion, low motivation, negativity, lack of interest, self-doubt—you name it—came down upon me like a thousand weighted blankets. I’d failed myself in what I speak to all clients about each day—I’d lost sight of life balance which directly impacted my ability to hear my own soul.
The beauty in this bout of burnout is that it helped me make some major decisions about how to move forward, but this time with more discernment and ease. The vision for my Soul Healing Institute wouldn’t likely have formed had I not been forced to rethink the process of teaching others.
Needless to say, I’ve felt deflated multiple times in my both my training and in my career despite the fact that many see me as a success. In each of these trials of life, I would have failed myself more had I not stopped to reassess and/or redirect my efforts. Each success has built on the previous failure to create a large binder full of images related to Soul Health that I now have the privilege (and excitement) to share with others.
These are some of the things I’ve learned along the way.
- Every apparent failure has led me to the next success.
- Sometimes what doesn’t work out is the best blessing I never asked for.
- Disappointment with my “great” ideas inevitably leads to even better ones.
- All unrealized accomplishments help to inform the completion of others.
- Just like evolution, success never happens as fast as you’d like it to and it NEVER happens in a straight line, so you might as well expect the detours and enjoy the scenery along the way.
- When you adapt, you take what you’ve already learned and create something even more interesting.
- Resilience is real. (The definition is “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness.) The more you persevere, the more you evolve.
- Listen to your own words—or they’ll come back to haunt (and bless) you!
- Keep your eye on life balance, not only because it helps you maintain health but also because it keeps you in contact with the most important part of who you are—your soul.
- And probably most importantly, when you stay aligned with your deepest self (alignment with your innermost ally is the epitome of soul health), there is NO WAY you can fail regardless of how much money you make, how well-known you are or who says nice things about you.
Life is too hard to expect we will get everything right the first time around. This goes for individual life lessons as well as the many lifetimes each of us has undergone to get us to where we are now. The concept of reincarnation allows us to understand that there is no way possible to learn everything we are supposed to in just one lifetime. Even if you don’t hold this belief, know that it is the ability to start over that opens us to the greatest success.
In the end, success is all about what we make of our failures. Our soul relies on our willingness to redirect our lives to navigate and overcome the many challenges of the human condition. Our souls, then, cannot fail, but we can fail ourselves by not learning as we navigate the many challenges of the human condition. With this in mind, the only way we fail is if we fail to try again. In last month’s newsletter I emphasized the quote, “You have to be committed enough to your future to let go of the past.” We must let go of our perceived failures to move beyond our disappointments as well.
To Albert Einstein, failure is progress. How will you make the best of your mistakes?
(Final thought: Wouldn’t life be boring if we always got everything right the first time? What would be the point of life? What would we have to learn? Something else to ponder….)
Katherine T. Kelly Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
With 35+ years of direct clinical experience, Dr. Kelly doesn’t just believe in helping others to heal; instead, her mission is to help them to evolve. Using her own integrative and trademarked framework—the Soul Health Model—Dr. Kelly approaches her work with clients from a “whole person” or “whole organization” perspective. She provides a uniquely progressive, yet down-to-earth approach and is well-known in therapeutic, medical and corporate communities. She thrives as she helps clients and organizations to reach what she calls “conscious evolution” through a variety of self-designed strategies. Her dedication to healing has been widely recognized as she was the recipient of the Provider of the Year Award by the regional Mental Health Association and was nominated as an Incredible Woman for a local community television network, which spotlights role models to inspire young women to pursue their own passions.