I was lucky enough to attend the Future Females birthday celebration in Johannesburg in August where Lauren and Cerina talked about failure. It is something that is topical for me right now because I’ve experienced a disappointment that made me doubt myself, and their honesty inspired me to share my story.

I changed careers in my forties due to a dramatic health collapse from stress. I could not go back to the work that made me ill, so I chose to go forward into work that is more aligned to my strengths and talents. I became a writer. I wrote a book as a foundation and I look for opportunities to write about my areas of interest. I wrote for an HR platform for a few months this year and recently, I got fired. Yes, I got fired for the free content that I provide. Effectively, I can’t even give away my content. Can you imagine the impact on my self-worth?

The Shame And The Reckoning

I was reeling with feelings of anger, disappointment and shame. I felt worthless and I started to question myself, my skills and my value. I’m already battling imposter syndrome in a new career, trying desperately to recover from the blow to my confidence after burning out in the first place. And now this rejection. I am a big fan of Brené Brown who studies shame and vulnerability. In her book, Rising Strong, she advises us to feel the emotions, to be vulnerable and to bring shame to the surface because it thrives best in the dark recesses of our thoughts.

I decided to do something uncharacteristically me: I was vulnerable and leaned on my husband. I told him how they fired me and how they thought my writing wasn’t sufficiently mature. I was expecting something like ‘Ah babe, you still rock in my mind’ or for him to give them the metaphorical finger on my behalf. Instead, I got ‘Well your writing is a bit samey’. I should have just lay down on the floor so that he could get in a few kicks at the same time.

Not only did I receive a rejection from the publication, but my spouse didn’t believe in my writing either. I had to really dig deep to process what all this meant for me. I allowed myself to feel the emotions fully. According to Brené Brown, badasses don’t try to avoid emotion. I sank into the despair and I allowed myself self-pity and wallowing in misery for a day or so. I can’t stay there too long because it’s boring, so I moved swiftly onto the analysis and overthinking stage. What should I have done differently? Is my writing bad? Was I enjoying writing for them?

I asked myself what’s really going on, making sure I was brutally honest. I believe firmly that life is to be enjoyed and if work is painful, something needs to change. Writing for the publication was a struggle and doing work that I wasn’t enjoying was in direct contrast with what I speak and write about. I also realised that the reason that it was a struggle was because I’m disconnected from the corporate world. This was a tremendous gift and I’ll explain why.

Failure Solves Problems

My first book was written about my story of how I got sick from stress. I wrote it when I was still recovering, with such chronic fatigue that I could do little else other than read and write. I’m happy with the book I wrote in that time period, but I can’t write two books in isolation. For months, I’ve been battling to figure out how to make my next book interesting and meaningful for the reader. And writers do feel mounting pressure to make each book better than the previous one.

I realised that my next book would be of much greater service to humanity if it contains useful data and stories about other people’s experiences on stress. I’m going to conduct research into stress in the corporate workspace, potentially amongst entrepreneurs and other groups in the future. I love data, I love extracting trends from research and I love being of service to people.

This insight created great internal motivation for me. It was that moment when the idea sparked, and I instantly felt motivated to bring this idea to fruition. It’s clear that motivation must be intrinsic, that is, it comes from your internal drive rather than someone else’s ideas, expectations or targets. It’s an important aspect of being an entrepreneur because we don’t have a manager to tell us what to focus on and we don’t have someone holding us accountable. We need to do this for ourselves and being intrinsically motivated is of utmost importance.

Connecting With My Purpose

Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why contains many great learnings. He shows how the most successful entrepreneurs and companies in the world have a very compelling WHY at the centre of everything they do. This failure brought me back to why I do what I do. I want to reach as many people in the world as possible with the message that it is possible to build happy, fulfilling lives. I believe this to be my calling and it’s something that means a lot to me. The rejection I suffered allowed me to reconnect with my WHY.

We all have unique gifts and talents. Bringing them to the world takes courage and it requires us to develop a strong sense of self-belief that we keep coming back to in times of doubt and difficulty. We need to be resilient enough to trust our own instincts and strengths. And we need to be selective about the people we seek feedback from.

Being an entrepreneur is difficult and it requires internal motivation and the willingness to fail. Being open to the learnings that come out of failures is a key ingredient for success. Sometimes failures lead us towards ideas and realisations that in time create products and services of great value to the world. Sometimes they connect us with our purpose and create a stronger pull for us to deliver what we are passionate about. This failure became a catalyst for me to embark on an exciting project and fuelled me with the motivation to bring it to life.