Failure as Soul Teacher

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Benjamin Field, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

“Failure is a mystery, not a problem.”
—Thomas Moore

Tim, a mid-career client in transition, recently shared how he’d “failed” a job interview. The blow came when he couldn’t land a clean answer to the classic prompt: “Tell me about a time you didn’t get along with a coworker.” A few days later, the company emailed their “regrets.” The word struck him. As a former hiring manager, he knew it was standard language—but now, he was on the receiving end.

“It feels like failure. Like I’m not good enough,” he said.

This struck a deep chord. I’ve heard this voice countless times—from clients, from friends, from my own psyche. Jung called it a complex: a charged emotional wound around a specific theme. In Tim’s case: inadequacy. And underneath it, another truth emerged.

“I’m afraid I can’t be successful unless I show up wearing the right mask.”

There it was. Not just the fear of failure—but the pressure to perform. To hide behind a persona. To get the part by playing the part.

“All the world’s a stage,” I quoted.
“Exactly,” Tim said. “It all feels so performative.”

Performance vs. Mastery

In coaching, we often speak of the difference between a performance mindset and a mastery mindset.

A performance mindset is ego-driven. It’s outcome-oriented. We measure our worth by success and failure. We play to win—and when we don’t, we crash. We tighten. We self-criticize. We lose presence. This mindset can sometimes drive achievement, but it rarely leads to growth—and never to peace.

A mastery mindset, by contrast, is soul-driven. It’s process-oriented. It says: I’m here to learn. To grow. To serve the work itself. Winning or losing becomes secondary to being fully in the arena. This is the ground of presence, of resilience, of flow. And paradoxically, it often leads to deeper, more sustained forms of success.

The shift from performance to mastery doesn’t make us immune to failure—it makes us more available to what failure is here to teach.

Failure as Initiation

In a culture obsessed with winning, failure is often framed as a detour or deficiency. But from a soul perspective, failure is initiatory. It humbles the ego. It slows our forward momentum just enough to ask: Am I on the right path? Whose dream am I chasing?

Thomas Moore writes, “Failure is a mystery, not a problem.” When we treat it as mystery, failure becomes less of a personal flaw and more of a collective rite—something archetypal, a shared human experience that binds us together.

Failure can also serve as a sacred corrective. When the ego grows inflated or misaligned with soul, failure pulls us down—not to punish us, but to root us. Like gravity, it restores right relationship. Without this grounding, ambition becomes hubris.

Consider the tragedy of the Titan submersible—named for gods, destined for the ocean floor, imploding en route to the wreckage of the Titanic. Here, myth meets metal. Had failure visited earlier—had it been heeded—disaster might have been averted.

The Gift on the Other Side

Failure, when metabolized, opens the door to something new.

If Tim can sit with the sting of that interview—not just brush it off or hide behind a coping narrative (“they sent their regrets”)—he may discover a deeper truth. Perhaps that job wasn’t aligned. Perhaps he was never meant to wear that particular mask. Perhaps failure is pointing him toward a truer path.

When we embrace failure with curiosity instead of shame, it becomes compost for growth. It brings us closer to our Opus—the great work of our life.

So, next time failure knocks, don’t slam the door. Let it in. Let it speak. Ask what it’s here to undo—and what it’s here to begin.