The Path to Success is Normalizing Failure

The Path to Success is Normalizing Failure

In December of 2023, a few weeks before I was leaving Guatemala to visit home for Christmas, I had a moment of total satisfaction and fulfillment. Laying in my hammock on the balcony of my lofted bedroom, from my actual dream home in tropical paradise, with a million dollar view of the lake, having completed my client projects for the day, I thought to myself, or rather, I felt in my heart–”I have arrived. This is my version of success.”

I’ve had a few of these moments throughout life. Another was on the patio of my villa in Costa Rica back in 2018, attached to a private yoga platform, where I lived directly across the street from a vast deserted beach, waves for days, regular sloth sightings, and the most awe inspiring Alice in Wonderland flora I’d ever encountered.

I remember years prior scrolling the Instagram (before IG or influencers were even a thing yet–so you know I’m an OG) of a high level female entrepreneur in her thirties I followed who spent half the year in Costa Rica, building her business remotely, and I quietly and unknowingly planted the seed “Hey, that could be me one day.” And one day, sitting at my laptop in cutoff jean shorts and a crop top, immersed in creative work, I looked up and realized “Oh shit, I did it.”

But this story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Well, at least not until the punch line. Here comes the reality check of the emotion-cycle of an entrepreneur. In December of 2023 I felt successful. Not on paper superficially successful, because we all know that doesn’t equate to happiness. My dream is not to sit at a desk in some capitalist-driven uptight office with weird power dynamics and feel burnt out without actually living. Did that, hated it. But like, I felt like I was doing life and business on my own terms, and actually crushing it. 

Success is going to look different for all of us.

In fact, it’s one of the things I guide my coaching clients to explore their own definition of. For me, it was always about the lifestyle freedom to travel, wake up to the sunrise without an alarm with the view of a jungle, spend unlimited time lounging in hammocks and at the beach, and the luxury of spending time doing things that make me feel wildly alive (you know, before I die). And, I can say with wholehearted gratitude that I’ve spent the majority of my adult life pursuing and living my version of success.

For the past 10 years, I’ve lived by the beach, cruised around in my Jeep Wrangler soft top, eaten mangoes and watermelon in the sunshine, paddleboarded, skated, biked, or run along the bay, spent afternoons reading personal development and business books on blankets in the park, journaled, pulled oracle cards, danced wildly around my living room with girlfriends, practiced yoga, made at-home kombucha and green juice, watched epic sunsets, swam topless in the ocean, and truly lived the life I’d imagined, an aligned life that I chose, that allows me to be the full expression of who I am.

All while building brands, launching courses, writing blog posts, leading workshops, coaching clients, following my creative urges, and expressing my soul purpose. I’m one of those people who’s welcomed the full spectrum of human experiences, from places lived, to businesses started, to soul connections, to passions pursued. The catch is, for us big dreaming, purpose seeking, multidimensional visionaries and idealists, the monotony and reality of life can sometimes let us down.

Over the course of my years of dream pursuing, there have been an equal share of tears, disappointments, and heartbreaks along the way.

In January of this year I arrived back in Mexico with suitcase in hand, uncertain of my direction. Within a few days I was lounging on one of the world’s most pristine beaches, and I felt empty inside. Laying there in my bikini, sun beaming down on my freckled skin, straw hat shielding my eyes I thought “I’ve done this before.” I felt like I was in a repeating loop of an adventure I’d already lived, and it just wasn’t exciting anymore. In fact, it was depressing. It wasn’t the dream anymore. The dream had evolved but I was circling back to an old version that I had outgrown. 

So, months passed and I was floating around Mexico–quite literally, in the Caribbean sea, spending sunrises on paddleboards, late mornings at yoga under the palm trees, afternoons at cute humid outdoor café picnic benches working, and afternoons microdosing (mushroom diaries are another blog post) on sailboats with fellow nomadic professionals. And it all felt so devoid of meaning. While I was grateful each day for the life I had intentionally curated all those years ago, I no longer felt fulfilled and it was time to upgrade my dream.

I’ll also save redefining my definition of success in this stage of life for the next blog, because this year has given me the opportunity to completely reassess my values. But for now I want to share the dark side of being an entrepreneur, and what it feels like to fail. The first quarter of this year sent me spiraling into the deepest depression of my entire life. And, as someone with lifelong mental health struggles, I don’t throw that term around. I had just finished hosting an online event with my audience with a ton of signups and was building energy and momentum with new ideas and launches. And then, the day came when my progress came to an abrupt halt, and my newest offers that I was so in love with were met with crickets.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that one particular business failure, or perceived failure, completely broke me.

I thought to myself “What have all these years been for? The decade of work, creativity, belief in myself, sacrifices, discomfort, and relentless pursuit of a life that defies the norm?” I guess you could call it an entrepreneurial existential crisis. I suddenly deemed my long term efforts as pointless, and fantasized about giving up, moving in with family, being sent to a mental hospital where someone would take care of me, or even worse, death. Soul death will be my third follow up blog article! There’s a lot of layers to this story.

Anyway, I spent 90 days in a deep depressive episode. I didn’t grocery shop, and lived off of processed snack food from the corner bodega. I gained weight from binging and hated myself and my body. I binge watched so many shoes that I got regular migraines. I didn’t work, and slowly watched my hard-earned savings dwindle. I reached the point where I didn’t know how to pay my bills. I gave up on business. I gave up on life. I didn’t leave the house for weeks on end. I didn’t shower. I called my family and friends to fill them in that I may be coming home. Disclaimer: I am blessed to have a strong support system of family, friends, coaches, and professionals during difficult times and felt fully held and surrendered in my depression. If you ever get to the point where you don’t see the point in existing, please reach out to someone. Finally, after weeks of intensive therapy, conversations with loved ones, and reanimated belief in myself, I made a comeback. But, the journey in between was one of the ugliest of my life.

Honestly, I was tired. Exhausted from years of optimism, and being my own boss and an island of one in my business, being the only one to cheer myself on when shit got tough.

Fast forward to today. It’s June 2024 and I’m again on top, more inspired and motivated than ever in my business, with a network and community of visionaries, coaches, and spiritual entrepreneurs that light me up. I’m back in Guatemala and am thriving. I’m surrounded by beauty, sisterhood, nature, and abundance. And months later, I realized that the reason no one had signed up for the particular offering I had launched was because the link to join was wrong. We’ve all got to laugh at the mistake I made in perceiving myself as a failure. The truth is, my soul needed to go through the portal of death and full surrender to shed codes that were outdated and pieces of myself that no longer served me. After the whole experience I felt reborn. But what it also taught me was that as entrepreneurs, we can never give up.

Success in entrepreneurship means showing up for ourselves and our businesses day after day, and reframing our “failures” as necessary parts of the journey.

As entrepreneurs, we need to normalize failure and share in the vulnerability of business ownership not looking pretty all the time. In fact, it’s messy as fuck. Which is exactly what it’s like to be a human. And yet, we glamorize life to the point where we feel like we can’t make mistakes. And that success should look a certain way. Like a villa in Costa Rica, or a mountain loft in Guatemala? Screw that. Any high level leader will tell you that overnight success comes from years upon years of consistent daily effort, flailing around, trying and failing, and showing up through it all. And that’s exactly how I’m going to approach my year.

No one shows up to a workshop I host? Cool. Crickets after a newsletter announcement? Normal. Few likes on a social media post? Who the heck cares. Don’t reach a launch goal? Try again! Too few enrollments in a program? Keep going! Short on rent? Make a comeback. Doubt yourself? Call your own bullshit. No one to celebrate small wins with? Find your community. The world doesn’t label us as failures, we do. Sure, I’ve had many low points. I’ve even hit rock bottom. But I’m the only one responsible to define my self worth, and this year I choose success. Not because I’ll never fail again, but because I’m reminded now that it’s all part of the process.