THE A-Z OF FAILURES

How to Be a Failure (Part W)

Wine, women and wrong

Annie Trevaskis
3 min readApr 15, 2023

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A neon sign spelling out “People fail forwards to success”
Photo by Ian Kim on Unsplash

I want to encourage everyone to fail more regularly. Success is safe, but it isn’t hard, and it isn’t a challenge — it doesn’t show you where your limits are or give you any idea of your true potential. You need to attempt difficult things, things you might fail at. Learn to step outside your comfort zone and stretch yourself: strive to fail, learn, and grow.

Join me in this episode of my A-Z of Failures and be inspired.

Wine

You can learn a lot from wine failures, most of which will improve your ability to handle embarrassment. It’s a funny thing, embarrassment. If you feel embarrassed, it is catching; others will feel it too. Embarrassment is a choice; if you learn to let go of it, everyone will laugh with you.

Take the time I was on a roundabout in Budapest. There was wine, a bunch of women on a hen weekend, and me, about to do something wrong. We had settled there, on the only free piece of ground we could find with a view of the fireworks. I needed to pee, but there were no loos, so I shuffled backwards into the hedge in the middle of the roundabout until I felt I had enough privacy and let gush. There was a lot of shouting and laughter, so my friend went round to the other side of the hedge to…

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Annie Trevaskis

I came, I wrote, I conquered. That last bit might not be true, but at least I am putting up a good fight.