If you can live with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same:
…
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it

Rudyard Kipling, If

Sitting on my dad’s chair in his study in my childhood home, I would read the framed copy of this poem that hangs on the wall at least once a month. I’ve lived by Kipling’s words for as long as I can remember.

When things go well, I celebrate. When things so badly, I do my best to do exactly the same things. I stop work early, I treat myself to time playing games or watching a movie, I enjoy a drink of my favourite whisky.

Today, on hearing that I hadn’t been shortlisted for a job that I had publicly declared an interest in, I realised that I needed to go further.

Because I’d tweeted about it and written a Linkedin article about it, and because if I’d been successful I would have Tweeted about it and posted about it on Linkedin, I owed it to myself to do the same now I’ve been unsuccessful.

I can’t say to myself that I treat triumph and disaster just the same if I stop myself short because this bit of it is embarrassing. Of course it’s embarrassing. Of course I don’t want to share it. But holding ourselves to our values is not about what we want, it’s about what we do.

So I failed. And I failed publicly. And it’s embarrassing. But I have lived up to the standards I set for myself. I can hold my head high because I honoured myself. That is more important to me than any victory I might win or any defeat I might suffer.

When we refuse to let failure beat us down, we discover it can lift us up.