Building Self-Compassion for Failure in the Creative Process

"No matter what we're trying to do-say, establish a new habit such as meditation, exercising more often, eating more healthfully, or diving into a new creative hobby-there will be days when life gets in the way. We may feel too tired; some emergency might arise; or we might simply forget to do what we had very good intentions of doing."

"It's exactly in these moments of failure that we need to offer ourselves some self-compassion. In fact, the whole creative process needs to be a compassionate one. One of the keys to creativity is testing different solutions to a problem-that is, iterating on the solutions and the design that you've come up with. Simply put, this means the first few attempts we make are not necessarily going to be the end result."

"Self-compassion for failure simply means turning the lens of compassion back onto ourselves. That is, recognizing our own moments of stress and suffering and being motivated in those moments to come up with a solution to alleviate our stress and suffering. There's a great deal of scientific evidence now that shows how self-compassion builds motivation: people who are self-compassionate tend to navigate failure better and tend to stick with behavior changes and habits they originally set out to change or establish."

Days of missed intentions are inevitable when fatigue, emergencies, or forgetfulness interfere with habits and creative goals. Failure is part of the creative process because early attempts often do not produce the final result. Self-compassion for failure means directing compassion toward oneself by recognizing stress and suffering and seeking solutions to reduce them. Scientific evidence links self-compassion with better navigation of failure and greater persistence in behavior change. A three-step approach supports this: acknowledge the moment, admit what happened, and accept the experience so motivation can continue and efforts can be carried forward.

Read at Mindful