Member-only story
How to Fail at Things Successfully
The joy and motivating power of not chasing success
“You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.”― Lisa Kleypas
For the past month, I woke up with the crippling feeling that no matter how hard I had worked, I failed. My motivation was converging to zero, despite all my efforts to pull myself out of the funk I was in.
I wanted to quit — but I couldn’t even do that.
I was doing everything half-heartedly, and of course, it didn’t bring the joy or the success I was used to.
Writing used to be my life-line, yet here I was — feeling like a failure, unable to keep up with my own expectations in terms of quantity and quality. The bar I set for myself was way too high for my current state of mind, and I chose to disregard it. But pushing myself towards some kind of illusion of perfection just backfired — of course, I couldn’t live up to it, making me more miserable and disappointed with myself. So I got into a downward spiral, where I decided not to do anything.
It wasn’t just about writing. Somehow everything collapsed onto me. I had a grandiose plan to move to another country, and it flopped. I managed to…
