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A review by labyrinth_witch
Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning Into the Unknown by Pema Chödrön
5.0
Fail fail again fail better is a two part piece including a commencement speech Chodron gave for her nieces graduation and a rare interview recording.
At a time of several deeply personal and painful “failures” and vulnerability, I kept checking out books on failure but found myself too exhausted to read them. So I appreciated the structure of this book as small points of discussion on one page accompanied by artful Buddhist strokes on the opposite page that illustrate the points. In that sense I felt my intellectual and artistic spheres fully engaged. It helped me “feel” what she was communicating in my center.
Therefore this book was a manageable reconsideration of the sense of failure, a reframing that I so deeply needed at this time. She talks familiarly about sitting with the raw emotion and just saying “I’m hurting” rather than distancing and internalizing blame. She talks about believing in your basic goodness and cultivating the ability to experience the fullness of being human- which includes up and downs. She reiterates the essential practices while providing concrete mantras to facilitate the sitting with. And last but not least, she reminds us of “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
It reset me in a sense, allowing me to once again believe in both my complete goodness and my fluidity.
Unfold.
At a time of several deeply personal and painful “failures” and vulnerability, I kept checking out books on failure but found myself too exhausted to read them. So I appreciated the structure of this book as small points of discussion on one page accompanied by artful Buddhist strokes on the opposite page that illustrate the points. In that sense I felt my intellectual and artistic spheres fully engaged. It helped me “feel” what she was communicating in my center.
Therefore this book was a manageable reconsideration of the sense of failure, a reframing that I so deeply needed at this time. She talks familiarly about sitting with the raw emotion and just saying “I’m hurting” rather than distancing and internalizing blame. She talks about believing in your basic goodness and cultivating the ability to experience the fullness of being human- which includes up and downs. She reiterates the essential practices while providing concrete mantras to facilitate the sitting with. And last but not least, she reminds us of “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
It reset me in a sense, allowing me to once again believe in both my complete goodness and my fluidity.
Unfold.