How To Transform Failure Into Your Superpower

Hello beautiful humans,

My name is Darius and I am so grateful that you and I,

We get this time together.

As I brainstormed on what I wanted to bring in this next video,

You know,

Video is a little different.

You all might be used to me coming at you through guided meditation,

Audio meditation experiences or like written sub stack posts,

But this is video,

Visual elements.

And so I sat down and I was brainstorming and thinking,

What do I want to bring?

What do I want to share through the medium of video?

And I asked myself this question that I've asked before,

Incredibly fruitful question.

If it's a thought experiment,

Okay,

You're ready.

If in one year from now,

I was going to go onto a spaceship and leave this incredible planet forever,

What video,

What story,

What gift that I've been blessed with through my journey,

Would I want to leave my community here?

And as I went down that path,

That thought experiment exploration,

I was like,

Hmm,

This is cool.

This is interesting.

Cause it allowed me to step outside of say trends or things that are interesting right now in this moment.

And think about things that have made a real impact,

A timeless,

Uh,

An impact that's beyond something that's like hot and interesting and trendy in this moment.

And so today I want to share with you something exactly in that vein.

It's a process.

It's a belief.

It's a system that has allowed me to take one of the scariest things in my life and perhaps in your life,

Which is failure.

You know,

This thing that made me small for years,

Made me quiet for years,

Made me sit on the sidelines for years.

And somehow I found a way I'm going to show you exactly that somehow that way to transform that experience and that guy into someone who believes failure is my superpower.

And it's not just my superpower.

It can become anyone's superpower.

Okay.

And so this can be relevant to you if you are launching something,

If you are creating something,

If you want to make a meditation,

If you want to write a post,

If you want to launch a retreat,

If you really anything failure is connected to everything.

If you want to start a relationship,

If you want to get a promotion at work,

If you want to explore ways to enhance,

Improve your health and vitality,

It's all over the place.

Okay.

And so anything else I want to say?

Yeah.

This is about being grounded in our body.

So let's take a breath.

Let's take a breath.

Let's slow down.

The more present we can be,

The more grounded we can be,

The more we'll be able to receive this information.

All right.

So let's do it.

Let's do it together.

Let's take a nice deep breath here.

Big exhale out.

All right.

We're talking about failure,

Failure,

And if you're watching this,

It's because there's a part of you that's perhaps interested in transforming your relationship with failure because you felt the impact of what fear of failure,

Fear of rejection,

Fear of getting it wrong,

Fear of looking bad has done to your life.

And so let's start with three questions.

Three questions.

If I hit this button,

I hit this button.

What happens?

What happens?

Oh,

My gosh.

Magic.

Three questions.

These three questions are fundamental.

You can start here and explore your existing relationship with failure.

And if you think you don't have a relationship with failure,

Trust me,

You do.

So the first question is,

How do you feel about failure?

The second question is,

What do you think?

But really,

What I'm trying to say is,

What do you believe about failure?

And the third,

Super important,

You stay to the end,

I'm going to show you this one.

My own personal version of this one is,

What's your process,

Process to handle,

To work,

To transmute,

To transform failure into a superpower,

Okay?

Or not into a superpower.

So how do you feel?

What do you believe?

Do you have a process?

Okay?

So take a moment.

How do I feel about failure?

Most people think it sucks.

Most people avoid it like the plague.

Most people are like,

Ugh,

It's the worst experience ever.

Do you have any beliefs about failure?

We're about to jump into this in a sec.

And do you have a process that works for you,

That allows you to find the gold,

The power within failure and transmute,

Transform it into your secret weapon,

Your greatest advantage?

I'm going to show you this if you stick around to the end.

There's a five-part process.

All right,

Let's keep going.

So dreams,

Dreams,

Dreams.

When I say dreams,

What do I mean?

Oh,

I almost rhymed there.

Cool.

When I say dreams,

I don't mean when you go to sleep and you're like,

What am I dreaming?

When I say dreams,

I don't mean this naive,

Idealistic thing that's never achievable.

When I say dreams,

What I mean is that thing,

Whatever that thing is,

Whether it's a creation,

A business,

A relationship,

A home,

Your body,

Your relationship with yourself,

That thing inside your heart that you want to bring to life.

That last part is key,

Bringing it to life.

And so I call this the dream pyramid,

Okay?

Because the dream is up here.

This is the dream,

All right,

Dream.

But before we can get to the dream,

We need to acknowledge that the dream is built on top of stuff,

All right?

And this bottom piece here is your beliefs.

Your beliefs are the foundation.

Your beliefs are fundamental to determining how high your dream pyramid can soar and how likely it is for you to be able to bring your dreams to life.

Now,

Your beliefs inform your identity,

Identity.

There you go,

Right?

What you believe to be true informs who you believe you are,

Okay?

So if you believe smoking is toxic,

You're not going to be someone who smokes because you're someone who's like anti-smoking.

Or you believe health is important,

You're not going to be someone who smokes.

It changes your identity.

Like,

That's not me.

I'm not a smoker.

That's not me,

Right?

Beliefs,

Identities.

And then identity informs your actions.

It's like what you actually do.

And your actions inform your outcomes,

What happens because of those actions you take.

And then your outcomes inform your dreams.

So it's not just about changing your actions.

It's not just about getting better outcomes.

If something's not working,

It's probably because there's a faulty belief that's shattering,

Shattering,

Shattering,

Right?

It's not stable to support your dreams.

And guess what?

Not all dream pyramids are the same size.

Some are this big.

Some are this big.

And so if you want to upgrade your dreams,

I'm here to tell you upgrading your beliefs is the most important thing you can do,

Okay?

And today we're talking about the beliefs around failure,

All right?

So let me give you an example.

This will help bring it to life.

This feels a little vulnerable,

But we're going there because that's what this is about,

Right?

I'm getting on a spaceship in a year.

I got to leave the best goodies I got here for y'all.

So I,

For years and years,

Was terrified of making a mistake,

Terrified of looking bad,

Terrified of putting myself out there,

Putting my work out there.

So I sidelined myself.

I marginalized myself.

I muted myself.

And so when I explored what my beliefs around failure were,

This is what I discovered.

Ready?

How do I do this?

Let's do it here.

So failure for me equaled rejection.

I got rejected,

Right?

Rejection equaled.

.

.

When I got rejected,

I felt like I was denied,

Right?

Denied.

When I was denied,

I felt this sense of like abandonment,

Right?

Abandonment felt like the love left.

When the love left,

I felt not lovable.

So failure meant I'm not lovable,

Okay?

That might feel extreme to you.

You're like,

What are you talking about?

How did you get there so fast?

It's a slippery slope,

Y'all.

The more I've worked in this space,

The more I've helped people over the years,

I've discovered that failure,

Whatever form it takes,

Whether it's this perfectionism of this comparison,

Whatever form resistance shows up and tries to convince you,

Failure is going to be catastrophic for you.

It's really at the heart of it,

Some sort of trauma response.

At some point in our past,

Someone did something,

Didn't do something,

Showed up,

Didn't show up,

Said something,

And we took it to somehow connect to the love isn't there,

We're not lovable.

So it's really important to go slow,

Really,

Really slow with this stuff,

Okay?

Because we somehow mistake something as simple as silence,

Right?

When you're putting content out into the world,

You're putting a meditation on Insight Time,

You're sharing your retreat,

Whatever it might be,

And someone doesn't hit that like button,

Someone doesn't give you a review,

Someone doesn't hit that heart button,

We equate silence equals danger,

Right?

Silence equals danger,

And silence is a form of failure,

And so we want to break this loop.

This loop makes it impossible for us to want to actually put stuff out there,

Right?

Failure equals rejection,

Equals denied,

Equals I got abandoned,

They left,

The love left,

Oh my gosh,

I'm not lovable.

And it took me a long time to get to this,

But perhaps if you explore your own beliefs around failure,

If there's a lot of energy around it,

You're going to be like,

What is happening?

We're just talking about sharing an email,

Or sending a video,

Or asking someone how their day's going.

Why does it feel like there's so much pressure connected to that?

And so this is giving us a clue.

And so if our beliefs around failure are that like,

When I fail,

I'm not loved,

It's going to make it hard for our identity,

Our actions,

Our outcomes,

And our dreams to soar into the sky.

So how,

How,

How,

How,

How,

How,

How do we get to the next stage?

I'm going to tell you that was my old belief around this,

Right?

The feeling of failure was worst thing ever.

I'm the worst ever.

I suck.

I can't do this.

I'm broken.

Can you relate to any of that stuff?

And so this new approach has allowed me to see failure in a very different way.

Now,

Yes,

I get nervous and excited.

I'm going to tell you why I get excited.

It's because my belief around failure.

My belief around failure is failure equals essential to success.

That's not how you spell success.

Success.

There you go.

Hello,

Your hair layer.

Hilarious.

Failure essential to success.

Rick Rubin,

Who is one of my favorite authors,

Thinkers,

Mentors,

You know,

Incredible music producer,

Artist,

Spiritual teacher.

He has this quote that forever changed my life.

Failure is the information we need to get to where we're going.

For most of us,

We want to get to the top of that pyramid.

We want that pyramid to be as high as possible.

So we need the information and the information is only accessible as essential through failure.

Once I saw that,

I was like,

Whoa.

And my other belief is failure can actually become my superpower.

I'm going to show you that one in a moment.

And that one is a great segue into my process,

Right?

Before my process of dealing with failure was not thinking about it,

Not feeling it,

Just shoving it all down and then retreating.

And being like,

That was not good.

I'm not going to do that ever again.

And I robbed myself of that information,

The essential information,

Right?

Maybe you can relate.

You tried something once or you just the fear of failure paralyzed you so much that you didn't even give yourself a chance to try.

You're like,

It's too scary.

And so my new process is called fail-a-bration.

There's five steps.

I'm going to show you this in a moment.

Why do I call it fail-a-bration?

Because it has the word,

The part of the word celebration.

If failure has this incredibly dense,

Intense,

Like numbing,

Freezing,

Terrifying energy,

Because that's what they tell us in the world.

You know,

That's what we've been told.

That's what we've experienced.

I needed to pair this with the opposite.

When we are in love,

When we are something great has happened,

What do we do?

We have a party.

We have a celebration.

And so I wanted to bring right off the top by naming this thing,

Something celebratory,

Something joyful,

Some reminder to myself that this is a good thing.

This is a good thing.

So it's called a fail-a-bration party.

Okay,

Or just fail-a-bration.

Five steps.

I'm going to tell you and I'm going to see if I'm courageous enough to actually demo these because I've got my journal here,

But I'm like,

Maybe we say that for a different session.

So here are the five steps.

Ready?

Step one is zoom out gratitude.

I'm going to tell you gratitude.

I'm going to tell you what all this is in a sec.

Number two is space to feel.

Number three is a self-love combo.

Number four is find the gold.

Number six is zoom in and forward gratitude.

So what are we doing?

We are bookending this with gratitude.

We open with gratitude.

We close with gratitude.

We make some space to feel what we've been terrified to feel.

We have a conversation.

We ask ourselves.

I'm going to tell you this in a moment.

If this feels familiar,

If it's old,

If something,

You know,

Like sometimes we feel and it's just like,

Yeah,

That made sense.

But when we fail and we start to like catastrophize and you could feel like way more energy than needs to be here for the thing that actually happened.

It usually means it's younger stuff,

Older stuff,

Past,

You know,

Like experiences that are pouring energy and projecting energy into that experience.

And then there's gold.

This is a superpower piece.

Once we can process there's gold,

There's nuggets,

There's key information to help you moving forward.

And then we close with zoom in and forward gratitude.

I'm going to tell you what this is in a sec.

I'm actually just going to show you what it is.

So I'm going to take a little gander here of time.

I know,

Man.

This material is so.

So powerful,

So powerful.

OK,

I'm going to do it feels vulnerable,

But my sense is the best way to demonstrate this for y'all is to literally take a page out of my own book,

My journal and tell you a recent experience with this.

OK,

So I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to take a deep breath.

All right.

I'm getting on a spaceship leaving Earth,

So I got to leave the goodies.

All right.

Here we go.

Recently,

I ran a workshop.

It did not go the way I expected.

All the best intentions.

I came in.

This is going to be great.

I walked out.

Hmm.

That did not work.

That's a really nice version of what I actually said.

I got down on myself.

I started swearing.

I started.

Oh,

What?

My wife was like,

What are you doing?

Just say the thing.

I'm like,

I'm not ready.

So the first thing I did that's really important is I gave myself 24 hours,

Sometimes 24 hours,

Sometimes 48 hours just to,

Like,

Feel the thing before I tried to process the thing.

And I did.

And then I opened up my journal and I wrote,

Celebration.

Let's go.

And I did exactly the five steps I shared with you.

And I'm going to just,

You know,

Step one,

Remember,

Zoom out gratitude.

So what this is,

Is when we're in it or we're so in it,

In our creations,

In our projects,

We're so harsh on ourselves and it feels so intense.

It's helpful to zoom out and get some perspective.

And it's helpful to do that with gratitude.

So it's not just things I'm grateful for.

But for example,

I always zoom out and think about how lucky I am to be able to be playing this game,

Whatever this game is.

For me,

It's creation and art and expression.

And so step one,

I am so grateful to be playing the game.

So grateful that my biggest stress is how to serve my audience and community.

Nice perspective.

I'm so grateful that 20 humans showed up to that workshop.

So grateful to have an audience.

Years and years,

Like one or two people would show up.

I'm so grateful that I am a full-time creator and artist.

So that just took some weight off my shoulders because it reminded me of like,

Dude,

I know you care.

I know this is important.

I know you feel really crappy.

And what we're talking about is creation and art and community and on,

You know,

Growing your audience in the grand scale of things,

In the grand scheme of things.

That's a beautiful problem to have.

And I just took a deep breath.

I was like,

You're right.

Number two,

Space to feel right now that I took that weight off my shoulder,

I give myself some space to feel because now I felt safe to feel.

Before I was like,

I was like,

Pent up,

Frustrated.

I was like,

And I wrote,

I feel embarrassed.

I feel shameful.

I feel disappointed.

I feel angry.

You know,

It feels vulnerable for me to say that.

That's what came up.

And it was like,

You know,

Saying it out loud is interesting because I was like,

It was just a workshop.

It was a bonus workshop.

You did your best.

What's happening?

What's this shame?

What's this embarrassment?

You know,

I feel like I messed up,

Like I let people down,

Like I pissed off people,

Like I disappointed people and that they're never going to trust me or come back.

So as I explored this,

I could see that there's some stuff that's not just now.

There's some old stuff.

And I'm clued in like this feels like,

You know,

A younger part of me,

Like a teenage part,

You know,

Teenage Darius feels afraid to mess up,

Feels,

You know,

Because he got bullied and teased when he did.

Needs to get it right or lose his friends,

Lose his status.

Doesn't feel solid ground beneath him.

You know,

And I started to slowly go in and just remind myself,

You know,

Like my dad wasn't around.

My mom worked all the time because she was a single mom,

Didn't have siblings.

I wasn't very popular in my friend groups.

Feels like no one has my back.

So when he would mess up,

It felt like everything caved in,

Felt like he was attacked and no one had his back.

That's a lot of pressure,

Little Darius,

Right?

This is the part where you're having a conversation right after we it goes from space to feel to like,

Let's have a conversation,

A self-love conversation.

And I like to ask myself,

Like,

Does this feel familiar?

Does this feel like have you felt this before?

Really gently,

Really softly,

Right?

I know I'm not a therapist when I'm doing this work,

But there's I can still go in gently,

Lovingly and explore and find versions of myself,

Younger parts of myself and love them and care for them and hold space for them.

And so that's a lot of pressure,

Little Darius.

I'm speaking to him.

I got you.

We got you.

God's got you.

You are allowed to mess up.

You are allowed to try things.

You are allowed to make mistakes.

You are allowed to fail.

It's essential,

Darius.

You,

My love,

Are a creator and artist.

That's a major part of your job.

In fact,

Making mistakes is your superpower.

You did your best.

You showed up with your heart open,

With the intention to serve your community.

It didn't go how you wanted.

That happens.

Learn,

Observe,

Absorb,

Evolve,

Then keep going.

I love you,

Young Darius.

And always,

Always,

Always,

Always have your back.

Always.

Okay.

So that's number three,

Self-love conversation.

Number four,

Now that we've taken that load off,

We've made space to feel.

We found where that energy,

That projection,

That extra energy came through.

We spent some time with that younger version,

Gave him what he needed.

He needed support.

He needed love.

He needed just space.

He needed a reminder that it's okay if he makes mistakes.

Then from that place,

We can go deeper and have a real direct conversation around the actual thing that happened,

The workshop,

In my example,

And what we can learn and how we can improve.

So I call it find the gold.

It's like looking for key takeaways,

Honest takeaways.

If it didn't go the way you expected,

There's probably something you can learn moving forward.

You know,

I have a series of things.

Tech demos aren't great.

Workshops,

Engage with your audience fast by asking questions.

There's a series of more specific things to this,

But the point here is get real.

What can you learn from that experience?

Failure is the information you need to get to where you're going.

Get the information.

Get the information.

That's how failure becomes your superpower.

When you can sit with it,

When you can hold it,

When you can learn from it without running away from it and making it this like abandonment,

This rejection,

This denial,

There's some gems in the things that didn't go the way you expected.

The last step,

Remember,

We open with zoom out gratitude,

And now we close with zoom in and zoom forward gratitude,

Right?

What that means is you come back and you remind yourself that you're still here.

You're still here.

You're still alive.

You still have energy.

You still have opportunities,

You know,

So you come back to the present moment and then you use that energy to remind yourself of your next steps,

Your next opportunities to show up with this new,

Renewed,

Expansive process,

Integrated,

Supercharged energy.

Okay,

So I wrote,

I am grateful to be able to create again next week.

I am grateful for feeling lighter through this process.

I am grateful for having more time and life force energy to get back on the horse and back on my path.

Not everyone gets more time and energy,

But we do.

We have more time and energy,

You know?

And I proceeded to kind of like,

Thank you,

God.

Thank you,

Universe.

Thank you,

All Darius from the past.

Love always and forever,

D.

I close.

I breathe.

I process.

I felt myself is stronger.

I felt myself build capacity.

I felt myself remember what a privilege,

What a blessing,

What a gift it is to be here,

To have life,

To have energy,

To be able to share,

To be able to create,

To be able to take creative risks and put myself out there.

Okay,

So that's my very personal,

Very intimate,

Very honest process.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for caring.

Thank you for having your own dreams,

Acknowledging your own dreams.

And my wish for you,

Dear one,

Is that you continue remembering how important your dreams are.

You continue finding new tools,

New approaches,

New ways to come back to those dreams inside your heart and to your gifts,

Your unique gifts that your soul came here with.

My name is Darius.

It's been an honor being here with you.

And I'll see you next time.

See ya.