Meditation For Creativity: Dealing With Failure

Failure is integral to the creative process. But it can incapacitate, dispirit, and inhibit us from reaching for new ideas. Taking an idea—that of the gift of a box of darkness— from poet Mary Oliver, we explore the gift of failure in this meditation.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to a meditation for creativity.

Today we're dealing with failure.

I'm Jeanette de Beauvoir and I invite you to spend just a few minutes thinking about what failure means and how you can use it instead of having it use you.

It happens to everyone who creates.

Some days what we create isn't getting us where we want to be.

The publisher rejects the novel,

The play gets panned by critics,

The artwork doesn't get placed in the gallery,

The literary journal nixes the poem.

Maybe all these things need more work,

Maybe they don't,

But the initial feeling of having failed is real and can be devastating.

This meditation is designed for those moments.

First,

Find a comfortable place to sit.

Shake out your arms,

Feeling the tension release,

Feel it flowing out of your fingertips,

Down from your shoulders,

Down your arms and out your fingertips.

Now rotate your head on your neck a few times,

Around one way,

Around the other and now shake again,

Shake your arms,

Shake your fingertips,

Shake all that tension out.

Now shrug your shoulders all the way up and then let them go.

And again,

Shrugging all the way up and back,

Hold it,

Hold it,

And then let it go.

Can you feel the tension you're releasing?

It's all there inside of you every time you hear or read or think or feel the word failure.

So the first step in coping with failing is releasing that tightness that it puts in your body.

You need to let go of that tension so you have room to contemplate what else is going on with you.

The most difficult thing there is,

Is to recognize failure as a step in the right direction.

Poet Mary Oliver wrote of a friend giving her a box of darkness and that it took her years to understand that it too was a gift.

Failure is a box of darkness,

But think of the amazing things that can emerge from such a box.

The creativity nourished in the darkness of failure can be astonishing in its scope.

So let's take a moment now and focus on our breathing.

I want you to keep the image of that box of darkness in your head,

Even as you take a deep breath in,

Hold it,

And let it out again.

Do you see that box in your mind?

Deep breath in,

Hold,

Hold,

Hold,

And let it go.

Tension is leaving your body and it's leaving you space for you to accept this box of darkness,

For you to accept this gift.

Let's take a moment now to look inside the box.

OK,

Here's one I just pulled out.

This is the failure that you accept and then put away and don't think about anymore.

I have a lot of those on my computer.

Stories that were rejected,

Poems that are half finished.

It's the hidden failure we all have.

No one wanted the work,

So no one knows about the work.

It hurts a little because I liked this story.

I liked this poem.

I thought that it spoke to a moment.

And here's what I'm seeing in the box right now.

Perhaps it was just speaking to the wrong moment.

You can fail tremendously and then later someone sees it and understands it.

Sometimes it's years later that you take your failure out of your computer or out of your closet or out of wherever you keep your paintings or your drawings.

You take it out,

You scarcely remember it yourself.

But you tweak it.

You try it again.

You put it out there.

Sometimes the line between failure and success is just about being in the right moment with the right idea.

All right,

Let's put that back in the box of darkness for now.

And let's check in with your body.

Did that idea frustrate you?

Do you believe there's no future for that idea,

For that project?

I want you to take that thought,

That rejection of your failed project.

I want you to take that thought in your hand.

It is weighing you down.

I want you to throw it away,

To hurl it as far away from yourself as you can.

The failure that's in your box of darkness will feed you.

It will inspire you.

Perhaps it can be resurrected.

If it can,

It's taken on wings of its own.

If it hasn't or if it can't,

You can build on it for the next project.

Think about that,

About your project,

Your quote unquote failure.

That book,

That painting,

That piece of music,

That dance.

That can become your next success in so many different ways.

Think about that as you breathe in deeply and feel the peace of that knowledge settle around you.

Breathe in and out.

What's next in the box of darkness?

Here's one.

It's a phrase.

I always fail,

It says.

You're nodding.

It feels that way,

Doesn't it?

Especially when we're stuck and the creativity just isn't there.

And you know what the gurus out there,

The famous authors and visual artists and musicians all say,

Failure is the key to everything.

But what's next?

If we know that failure is the way to get anything done that feels good,

Then it's about getting the space to imagine the actual utopia that follows it.

So every time you fail,

And you will,

And we do,

Every time you fail,

Allow yourself to imagine what could come next.

Not the perfect world inside of this particular project,

But the perfect world that could be beyond it.

The perfect world that feels impossible.

That's what I hope comes out of all of the failures in your box of darkness.

So put that thought right back into the box.

And now I want you to take a moment to stretch.

Stretch your arms out in front of you as far as they go.

Stretch,

Stretch,

Stretch.

All right.

And now reach them out to the side,

One on the left,

One on the right,

As far out as you can go.

Stretch,

Stretch,

Stretch.

Yes.

And back.

And now try it in back.

If you can,

Link your fingers behind your back and just stretch,

Stretch,

Stretch.

Yeah.

You've been stretching as far as you can go.

And stretching and failure are intricately linked.

Stretching is about failing because it's about challenging boundaries.

I want you to think about that part of our box of darkness as we get back to the breathing.

And breathe in.

Hold it,

Hold it.

And out.

Failing means stretching.

It means you've tried something you hadn't tried before,

Perhaps that no one has tried before.

In.

And out.

You'll never move beyond where you're sitting if you don't stretch.

You'll never move beyond what you're doing if you don't stretch.

You'll never move beyond what you're creating if you don't fail.

Reach into that box of darkness again.

What's next?

Usually,

Most people look at your success.

And that's all they see.

They don't see how many times you've fallen.

They don't see how many times you took a leap and didn't exactly make it all the way to the other side.

The times you came up a bit short.

But that failure doesn't mean you can't trust yourself.

It just means you have to stretch a little more to accomplish the leap.

Or perhaps it means you have to take a different route to get there.

If you can't leap over the chasm,

You can go around it.

There are many ways of being creative and of taking creative ideas and bringing them to life.

Sometimes you just have to think about how you want to get from here to there.

You have to learn to trust yourself in your failure.

It's okay if you want to close that box of darkness now.

You don't want it to overwhelm you.

It's part of who you are as a creative person.

But it's not the totality of who you are.

We don't ever want to spend too much time with any one of the boxes we keep.

Failing means you're out there trying.

You're doing the work.

You're maintaining the practice.

Take a moment to savor that knowledge.

You are creating even when you fail.

You are a creative person attempting something no one has ever done before.

Something unique to you.

You're not trying for perfection.

You're creating.

And the box of darkness is part of your creative toolkit.

Your creative repertoire.

Don't dismiss it.

Let it inspire you.

Let's take one more stretch from the bottom of your spine up to the tip of your head.

Feel that string that's pulling you up,

Up toward the ceiling,

Up toward the sky.

Breathe in deeply.

Hold the breath and release it.

One more time with your spine as straight as you can make it.

Stretching,

Stretching,

Stretching.

Breathe in and out and relax.

And now it is time for you to create something the world has never seen before.

Believe me,

I know you can.

You have this.