In the run up to Christmas many years ago I bought a couple of lengths of twisted willow that had been sprayed gold, brought them home and put them in a vase, weaving fairy lights through them. Within a week they’d sprouted leaves.  Those sticks quickly grew into trees that require hard pruning every winter. Neighbours have taken cuttings – a too technical term for snipping off a slender tendril of this vigorous plant – which quickly grew into new trees. The willow is the last tree in my garden to lose its leaves and the first to show signs of life in late winter.

But not this year. Only now, in late April, has it shown any sign of life.

Spring has been incredibly late this year and even the hardiest plants have held off as the weather remains cold and dreary. Light has managed to force its way through almost continuous cloud cover as the planet tilts towards the sun, but it won’t have escaped your notice that austerity seems to have reached even into the natural world.

Today is Earth Day, the largest civic observance in the world, and whilst you may not feel up to writing letters to your MP about environmental issues you could do a lot worse than making a point of seeking out a place close to you where you can spend a little time immersed in nature, even if that means seeking out one of the many trees finally in blossom and just spending time gazing at it. 

In Japan, Hanami is the centuries old custom of blossom viewing, a period after winter when people can leave their homes without being frozen or soaked, hanging lanterns in the trees, so that Flower Parties can continue into the night. For older or more serious minded people, simply watching the blossom reminds them that the beauty of life is fleeting and that they too are part of the cycle of growth, blossoming, fruiting, dying, and in death continuing to nurture new life.

Here in the UK, we are just a few days away from our own spring festival, Beltaine, a celebration of the smaller, less showy hawthorn flower and of life returning to the land. Too often, we forget that we too are part of the natural world, that we are as effected by sunlight and warmth, cold and dark and the rhythms of night and day as any plant.

Just as garden birds are having a hard time keeping their offspring warm and fed during this wet, cold spring, so every one of us, whether we can afford to have the heating on or not, is effected by the lack of natural warmth and having to spend months on end covered up and indoors. Not having sunlight on your skin results in vitamin D deficiency, which has an effect on mood as well as leading to weaker bones and muscles. And inactivity leads to depression. Commuting, though exhausting, does not count as activity.

Make a point today of going outdoors to do nothing, just for 10 minutes. Sit on a bench in the sun. Walk around looking for a cherry or plum tree – which you’ll recognize from the froth of flowers - and when you find one examine the structure of the tree, the colour of the blossom, whether the flowers are single or double, the glossy ruby red of cherry bark and so on. Frankly, no one will give a hoot about a person gazing at a tree in blossom, they won’t think you’re mad because, if they register you at all, there is an understanding that these trees are so beautiful that standing still and looking at them does not make a person bonkers. In fact – scientifically proven fact – it is likely to make you more sane than someone who doesn’t.

This is a guest post from Alastair Arnott, the author of Positive Failure. Rather than running as fast as we can from failure we might learn from it teaching us, as it does, wisdom and humility rather than the sloganeering and impossibility of 'mandatory success.'





In my book ‘Positive Failure’ I attempt to conceptualise failure. Such an important aspect of human development deserves to be understood fully, whatever occupation or facet of life we occupy. It has turned out that the roots of failure seem to lie in our schooldays. ‘How to’ has been done. We all know how to diet, how to get that perfect stomach and how to relax. We don’t need ‘how to’. What has not been covered, is when ‘how to’ fails. The stuff that gets in the way, the obstacles and defeat that is inevitable in our own personal journeys, the relentless perfectionism we strive to achieve. How relevant to people's real lives has school actually been? Over 50% of children leave school branded as failures in the UK, having not obtained the required amount of qualifications.

I argue that we all subconsciously want to be right, all the time. Hypothetically, lets imagine a world where this happens. Every endeavour succeeds as well as you thought it would, every obstacle is overcome easily and any problem is immediately solved. To me, this feels uncomfortable and frightening. Something ironically wouldn’t be ‘right’ if this was reality. We subconsciously strive to keep our image of ourselves positive, yet we all know that everyone makes mistakes and nobody’s perfect. So why do we defend, pretend and, in some cases twist the truth to make ourselves look good?

Have you ever paused and thought about William Shakespeare as a child? I hadn’t. As Ken Robinson said in one of his lectures: “can you imagine being his English teacher?” Stop making up words, calm down, put that pen down and listen, that isn’t on the syllabus, you have to follow our curriculum!

I wonder how he would fare in today’s school system? Would he have passed his English?

Our children are failing to learn because they haven’t learnt how to fail. They are more confident, more individual and more vulnerable than they ever have been. Their self-esteem is at record levels, yet employers the world over, complain of how they are just not up to the standard required. When they don’t know what to do, they crumble. Do they have the resilience necessary to secure the job or career they want? They are labeled as bright, dim, clever or stupid at younger and younger ages.  The IQ test continues to be the basis for the 11+ exam in the UK and is over 100 years old. Can you imagine if medicine, technology or science still used instruments and measurements from 100 years ago?

Can we reverse this? I think we can. I introduce the theory of positive and negative failure. Positive failure in its simplest form is a dose of failure that is similar to a vaccination process. The process of vaccination is not pleasant. I argue that the theory of positive failure mirrors the patterns of Edward Genner's smallpox vaccine and functions within the same paradigm.

In a world of mandatory success, I argue that success can breed contempt and positive failure breeds progression. To distinguish between the two types of failure, I offer this definition:

Positive failure: is failure after appropriate investment that leads to further learning or development.

Negative failure: is failure after inappropriate investment that stunts further progress or development.

Conducive to positive failure are appropriately supportive and forgiving relationships in an unforgiving environment. The more realistic and tangible the challenge or standard, the more likely it is for positive failure to occur.

I argue that negative failure adversely effects self-esteem and resilience. Positive failure does not adversely affect self-esteem, but strengthens and builds it. For positive failure to yield the best results, I suggest the following preconditions are important.

Pre-conditions for positive failure: acceptance of ones own vulnerability, having a growth mindset and embracing imperfection.

Pre-conditions for negative failure:  defiance of ones own vulnerability, having a fixed mindset and embracing perfectionism.

Rather than trying to live up to a perfectionalist idea of ourselves, which is projected by someone else, why not embrace our own strengths, our own failures and our own weaknesses. I encourage us to see failure as a gift, as an irreplaceable source of laughter, art, individuality, creativity and change.


Click the link to find out more about Positive Failure, out now with Cambridge Academic Publishers and available on Amazon.

                         "Summer holiday, £1,014. Christmas: £868.  
                          Eight counselling Session with Clare £400." 

Fellow counsellor Andrea Sheehy offers this calculation and it’s a very good one, perhaps particularly useful at a time when money is becoming tight and you're having to prioritise.

A man called my local radio station this week to talk about debt. He was living apart from his children and spent extraordinary amounts of the banks money to buy them presents. At Christmas he’d spent £2000 but said that the kids were ungrateful and their mother had poisoned their minds against him. The radio host asked some careful questions and it seemed as if, in fact, this father had been so desperate for a great Christmas that he’d made his kids anxious and tense. They wanted to relax and veg out and he wanted them to endlessly play and eat and be grateful.

Every counsellor that works for an Employee Assistance Programme will know the story of the client who realises that their stress will not be cured within 4 hours, has found the 5 free sessions incredibly valuable but won’t spend £50 a week on continuing this journey with another counsellor. Every counsellor will have had the discussion with a potential client who will go on minibreaks every fortnight, or to a monthly spa or has botox or travels to a second home every weekend, but who says they don’t have the money to spend on their own wellbeing.

The irony is that many people wouldn’t need to constantly spend money on stuff if they had spent a little time examining what actually makes them happy and what brings meaning to their lives.

The radio host spoke very sensitively to the resentful, unhappy father. He said, ‘Kids don’t want our money, they want our time. They don’t love us for what we get them, they love us because we listen to them and take care of them.” The father just couldn’t hear him, he was too filled with sorrow, confusion and bitterness and the host had to go to the travel news.

Rather than spending a thousand pounds on getting away from it all or attempting to make someone love you, spend a few hundred to explore your inner worlds. I promise you'll get more from counselling than you will from lying around in a white dressing gown drinking white wine all weekend.