YOUNG AT HEART
‘Failurerific’ Tips For When Life Gets Overwhelming
fail·ure·rif·ic /'fālyər'rifik/ adjective 1. lack of success of great size, amount, or intensity "Her failurerific day was remembered for years to come.”
Have you ever had a job interview where you were asked to describe a time you failed? While I understand that employers are trying to gauge your resilience — your ability to adapt, change course, and learn from failure — I wonder: is it healthy to focus on failure? An article titled “Women and Stress” published online in the Cleveland Clinic’s health library notes: “Men and women share many of the same sources of stress, such as money 34 | September-October 2021
matters, job security, health and relationship issues. Perhaps a little more unique to women are the many roles they take on. In today’s society, women’s roles often include family obligations, caregiving for children and/or an elderly parent (statistically more likely to be a woman) and work responsibilities as well as other roles. As demands increase to fulfill these roles, women can feel overwhelmed with time pressures and unmet obligations. They may feel a sense of failure in not being able to meet expectations for themselves and others.” On the other hand, recent articles in Elle (elle.com) and U.S. News & World Re-
port (usnews.com) both report that while women tend to be affected by failure to a greater degree than men, failure is an important and necessary step in building resilience and leadership skills. So, failure is bad and good? When asked the above interview question, I’ve tried to spin my answer to focus on what I learned from the failure and/or what I changed as a result. However, it’s sometimes hard to find the good if the sense of failure feels supersized aka failurerific! I made up the word failurerific, but the feeling is real! For me, life can feel failurerific for many reasons, including work craziness, guilt over not making enough time for my husband, Roger, aawmag.com
