10/12/2016
"It isn’t that the waves stop coming; it’s that because you train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in your heart, the waves just appear to be getting smaller and smaller, and they don’t knock you over anymore.
“Fail better” means you begin to have the ability to hold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability” in your heart.
So what I’m saying is: fail. Then fail again, and then maybe you start to work with some of the things I’m saying. And when it happens again, when things don’t work out, you fail better. In other words, you are able to work with the feeling of failure instead of shoving it under the rug, blaming it on somebody else, coming up with a negative self-image—all of those futile strategies."
Pema Chodron tells the story of when, having hit rock bottom, she asked her teacher what to do.