Success and Failure in 2021
…. and two ways to reset your day.
Driving home from my flight today, I simultaneously toyed with the dichotomy of my current reality. When I consider my life, on one hand I see a rich journey. My experience has been filled with unbelievable privilege to have traveled the world as a flight attendant and musician. My parents gave me the gift of education, and I now have an undergraduate degree, as well as a painstakingly earned Commercial Pilot’s license.
At the same time, I am an adult with comparatively nothing to my name, and Covid has only accentuated this. For every step towards ‘progress’, I feel like I fall backwards ten. Guaranteed, I could have made very different choices along the way, but at the same time my experience genuinely seems to resonate with others. I repeatedly encounter people in all walks of life who feel like they have fallen short of the landmarks their subconscious evokes. The issue is that these markers, like outdated stories of renegade cowboys and disney princesses, are deeply conditioned within us. How impossible is it to never consider the reality of your parents at your age, the ways in which they had already made strides towards careers, homes, families, and question how you have not reached landmarks you believed you would have by a certain point in life?
The reality is however, the structures that allow us to achieve the “fundamentals of success” have shifted in the landscape around us. What was once attainable is progressively unrealistic. Access to checking all the boxes of ‘adult success’ becomes narrower every day. We all know these stories, so I won't elaborate much:
The exponential growth of urban property value vs the miniscule increase in wages, and the unaffordability of owning a home if you live in a major urban centre.
The possibility of career tenure juxtaposed with a search for meaningful work, maintaining a work life balance, achieving fair wages, and good benefits.
Modern day relationships and the evolution of what “conventional” looks like in partnerships. Not to mention the impact of this on the choice to have and raise children, or to not have them at all.
Ideals like these may not be yours, but they can ruminate uncomfortably at a very deep level. Despite what your intellect values, it is challenging in a modern world to feel as though you have “achieved” as much as was once possible. I have struggled to avoid circling the drain towards this conundrum of despair, and recovering from that mental cloud can be frustrating if you focus on justifying, controlling, or changing your reality quickly when the results are so dependent on external factors.
What I want to offer are two stoic coping mechanisms when faced with the stress of this type of “failure”.
The first won’t make you feel better, but I suggest that your approach is to accept it like a law of physics:
If you weather this storm of feeling you will continue to have bad experiences, but there is also a guarantee that you will also have good days, experiences, and relationships too.
The second invokes some positive subconscious re-organizing, but with time can help you re-align; If our feelings of accomplishment are tied to our perception of success, then I urge you to redefine what success is, and ask yourself:
Do you enjoy the company you keep, and if so, are you working on being good to those who you love? (Yes = know you are succeeding)
What do you have that counts as a solid foundation now? The people, the place, the work you can count on? (Any answers = know you are succeeding)
Can you isolate what activities give your day meaning? Can you take small strides to work more on what you love so that your weeks are driven by meaning? (Yes = know you are succeeding)
Your life is your personal trajectory of time, and you can affect its narrative arc. In the grand scheme of things when you consider your past do you remember what you have done or what you did not have? The thing that is actually worth keeping “tabs” on is if you're building relationships and experiences that feel healthy for you, and that also serve the external world around you positively.
I gently suggest you write your own list of reminder questions that align with your personal values so that you can answer them on days that are hard. So that you can move closer to a trajectory that truly highlights the unique path that is meaningful for you.
While I work on my little projects at home during Covid, I am acutely aware that I am not where I believed I would be in 2021. Like you I am restricted. What I am grateful for is that I am infusing my energy into music again, using the time I might not have had otherwise. I know that I am slowly gaining hours as a pilot towards a new license. Maybe this work will pay off, maybe it is enough to give my own weeks a narrative arc that is built from my own meaning. I would never have flown a plane or played a rock show if I had held too tightly to what was “expected” of me. I remember I am lucky to have my support system virtual and otherwise, and this continues to fill my heart.
You should know that just by showing up you are succeeding. You deserve to feel success surrounding achievable goals you set for yourself every day. Remember that investing a small amount of energy each day into something you love, will eventually build a life you can feel good about. The flip side to the impossibility of our subconsciously programmed landmarks, is that if you do let go of these ideals, for a moment you experience freedom. You get to feel good about building your own dreams, in which the markers of failure and success are yours.
Tell me how you feel! Does this align? DM me @cleaanais on Insta
*this is a think piece not medical advice, I encourage seeking professional help if that speaks to you!