No matter which area of your life it concerns. You’ll most likely have felt like a failure before – or right now – otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this.
What (or Who) defines failure For you?
But before you are so quick to judge yourself that you have failed [at something that you have probably been working on very hard for a very long time now]… take some time to really understand against which (or whose) standards you’re measuring this?
Because one thing is for sure, the standards you’re holding yourself accountable against are not the standards your higher self is seeing for you. From a higher perspective, there is no such thing as failure! So let’s dive deep to find the treasure that is hidden here.
Who have you made the internal judge of your success?
Who have you made the internal judge of what personal success means to you?
Who gets to decide over your personal success – or lack of it?
It’s 99.5% not YOU, but some external voice / false idea you have internalised from a VERY young age on. So young that you have literally grown up with and into it, wrapped it around you like a second skin and made it a part of your identity. That’s why it feels normal to hold yourself against it [hint: although extremely common, it’s not how it is supposed to be in a world where we now have the potential and freedom to flourish and thrive as our true authentic selves].
If not yours – whose voice is it, then?
In most cases, your father’s, mother’s, grandparent’s, sister’s, brother’s, and teacher’s, as well as the collective voice of society and/or another group that represents a common theme/topic/ideal. And very likely, you’re harbouring a melting pot of all of them inside you, controlling your perception of yourself and your emotional + mental state.
The monster is rearing its head
For most of your life, this melting pot of internalised projections goes unnoticed because it has become such an integral part of yourself that there hasn’t been a chance to grow an awareness around to question it. But now that you are working on yourself, finding yourself more and more, discovering your personal values, and forging your own path in a congested world, this old piece of internalised identity [aka the voice of others] is speaking up. And you might painfully begin to realise that it’s not been speaking in your favour.
This happens because when you start to awaken your true self more and more within you, it will increasingly push these false concepts to the surface to make them visible and noticed by your conscious mind. Not to punish you, but to allow you to examine your values and beliefs, let go, and liberate yourself of what no longer serves you.
Why do i feel like i failed?
However, even with all this newfound awareness, you might still be feeling low and unsuccessful.
The tricky part of what I have described above is that most of this happens on a subconscious level, meaning that you are not consciously aware of what’s going on and how much the conditioning has been affecting you and your life choices up until this point.
You feel like you failed when you’re not fulfilling certain expectations (whose?) or hitting goals and milestones (are they even yours, or, which is more likely, has somebody else defined them for you?) and therefore (because you “feel it”), you believe it must be true.
But what needs to become conscious to you is that at the base of these feelings and what forms them – is false information that creates a belief which is dissonant to who you really are at your core – which you believe to be true (the false information). It’s an external opinion that you have internalised as your truth – which is not in accordance with your soul – hence creating a discordant feeling that you sense and interpret as failure.
And because we have never been taught about the truth and the power of our thoughts and emotions, you take the perceived failure at face value without questioning if it’s even true for you. Because for most parts, you’re not even aware of your own true success values and parameters at this time (only the ones you were imprinted with).
How ancestral programs shape your belief system around personal success
Let me give you an example; One of my heavy ancestral beliefs was that success could only (or mostly) be attained or measured in the form of monetary value. So regardless of how well you were doing, if the money wasn’t “reflecting” it, it would be worthless. This belief was so hardwired into our family line that I had – naturally – inherited it through the shared DNA, and it was so deeply nested into and part of my DNA that I didn’t consciously realise it was there, messing with me!
Subconsciously, I had an ancestral program dictating to me what it meant to be successful, and subconsciously I believed it to be true. Although for me, personal success has always been about personal freedom, happiness and deep fulfilment, and much less about the money itself, that deeply wired belief overpowered my soul’s truth and created massive confusion and polarity in my system, which I felt as a deep unhappiness and feelings of failure in my conscious existence.
However, when I was going through my spiritual awakening, there was a period in my life where I was doing extraordinary healing work on myself which liberated me from massive blocks and limitations that had been creating feelings of deep underlying unhappiness and unfulfillment. At that time, I was just about scraping by with money because all my time and energy was channelled into my personal healing. At times, I was counting every cent to cover my costs and be able to buy food, I had also accumulated a big amount of debts, and the situation kept me sleepless many nights.
Because the belief “you’re only successful when your bank account reflects that with money” was so strong, I thought I was such a failure, when in truth, I had been devoting all my time and energy to doing the most sacred and important work you can do on this planet, which was healing my life and breaking through massive generational curses – laying the foundations for my best, happiest and most successful life, not just for me but for everybody after me and bringing much-needed healing to my whole ancestral line. My emotional state became better and better, and I was feeling lighter, freer and happier than ever before, and yet I couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling that I was doing something wrong. That I – despite all the massive emotional and energetical wins – somehow just kept failing in life.
It was then, one day, when I was determined to get to the bottom of this because I recognized that there was something big that wasn’t in accordance with who I truly am and how I feel about life, where I identified this deeply rooted ancestral belief – sounding something like: “no matter how happy and peaceful you are if the money isn’t “proofing” that you “made it”, you’ve still failed at life. Money is the number one indicator to show that you are successful. Who cares about happiness and peace, it’s the money that counts!”
Understanding, that this was what was playing in my subconscious and allowed me to feel bad about myself despite all the awesome, magical, curse-breaking healing I had been through opened my eyes to the fact that I had given my power away of defining my own parameters for personal success without even knowing it.
When you are not setting the parameters for yourself, it’s like giving an entity the authority to judge your personal life over yourself. And in energetical terms, that’s exactly what happens. This entity keeps suggesting where you suck and to keep it at bay, you try to conform, trying to reach those goals. Betraying your (true) self.
I know, “modern spiritual teachers” teach you that you need to have positive thoughts all the time (I call bullshit on that, what needs to be released needs to be seen & looked at, not suppressed), but to get to the bottom of this and liberate yourself from it, you’ll have to let this voice speak.
Here are some questions you can ask that voice to understand where your "judgment of failure" is coming from and debunk and retire it from your life for good.
Have a conversation with this voice (journaling is a suitable method for that), ask questions and be discerning with the answers. Imagine you’re having a talk with a friend about this topic. You don’t have to agree with what the voice says. Just listen to what their opinion is.
1. What exactly makes me a failure in your (the voice’s) opinion?
2. Which points am I not checking in your conditional “this is specifically how failure does not look like list”?
These are usually “fixed” ideas that, if not applicable, make you feel like a failure. Some common examples are:
– to be making money with your business after a certain time frame, otherwise you “failed”
– to be in a committed relationship/married at a certain point of your life
– to have a particular body type, to have a boyfriend/girlfriend after having been on a specific amount of dates
– have kids at a certain age (not too young, nut not too late either)
– etc. etc.
3. What exactly makes you a failure in this voice’s eyes?
Don’t just take what the voice says as truth. Dig deeper, and ask questions. Like, “why is that so? who says so?” etc. This way, you’ll more likely be able to identify where the preconceived notion about how your life should look comes from.
4. What should you have achieved by now, according to the internal judge who deems you a failure? And why is it such a big deal that you haven’t?
Sometimes, there is just this feeling of dissatisfaction, but you can’t really pinpoint what it is. Here, as well, just ask questions to see what is wanting to come to the surface from your subconscious. The fact that it is starting to impact your emotional health means that something is ready to come up to the surface to be let go of and make space for better.
Whilst having this intimate talk with yourself, try to be as honest as possible and try not to judge or suppress what comes up. It’s important that these ideas can come up in all transparency so that you can then examine what feels really true to you and what – now that you see it laid out before you – doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.
Are these ideas congruent with what you want for your life, and therefore really what you personally would label as personal success?
If not, you have just dug up the reason why you feel like a failure – but are not!
If you need more clarity, just continue the introspection and self-reflection. Your truth is already in you and will show itself (and anything that isn’t your truth) to you, when you are willing to do the deep inner work and allow you to live a life on your terms and in your personal freedom!
Want To Go Deeper? Listen To A Related Podcast Episode On Spotify
If you want to learn more about reframing personal success in order to deeply FEEL successful – which will in turn will naturally support you in becoming successful, check out my podcast episode on Spotify: “How Defining Your Own Success Parameters Will Naturally Support You In Becoming Truly Successful”.
looking for support?
If you are looking for support in identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs that are making you feel bad, I invite you to book a guidance & healing coaching session with me. Tracking down and supporting you in releasing hidden blocks in a very compassionate way is my speciality as a highly intuitive deep-diving scorpio nature!
