Walking on The floor of mistakes
Why leaders must fact the shadow
‘The tangle of shadows’
King Billy Pine Walk
Cradle Mountain, Tasmania
The Floor of Mistakes
“Are you ever afraid?” he asked, tentative, almost shy.
“Of the dark, of the woods, of being alone in the world?”
The question felt heavy, as I carried it,
walking side by side, in the cool night air.
‘The narrative of silence’
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
We walked on.
Silence stretched between us,
and the night filled with the cries of night birds,
distant traffic,
rustles in the leaves of unseen animals
settling in for the night,
or just beginning to roam.
“I used to be very afraid,” I said.
“As a young man, the night itself
took on the shape of my fears.”
I paused, seeing again how my inadequacies,
my many mistakes,
rose to meet me.
The shadows loomed,
clinging to my feet,
as if the very ground was woven
from a net of all I had done wrong.
“The woven net, imperfect…”
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
And yet—
though we fear this floor of failings,
we fear even more to let it go,
terrified of falling into the abyss
of the unknown.
It is folly to think we can stand in the sun
while closing our eyes to the shadow.
For when our eyes are closed,
the darkness grows.
‘Living Insights…’
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
‘As I walked on in life,’ I said,
I learned, painfully,
that shadows are not only shadows.
Mistakes are not only mistakes.
They are living insights
into who we are.
When ignored, they fester and repeat.
When faced, they transform.
Our shadows give us ground,
our mistakes, once renamed,
become the very soil
upon which we walk toward the light’
He looked at me, quiet.
‘So… it’s not about ‘not being afraid’?’.
‘Insights into identity’
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
’No,’ I said, smiling.
’It is normal to be afraid of the darkness,
the trick is to learn to see this, and our failures, clearly,
and recast them as insights into our identity…
It is then, when we can learn to really walk,
with a sense of grounding beneath our feet’.
The shadow
‘The Shadow…’
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
Carl Jung wrote of the shadow, the denied parts of ourselves, often feared, hidden, or projected onto others. He cautioned us, that to ignore our shadow, is to risk being ruled by it.
We see this not only in individuals but in societies. Leaders who deny their failings, who rewrite or erase painful history, leave their people vulnerable to repeating the same mistakes. Efforts to minimize slavery, silence books, or censor museum exhibits are not mere oversights, they are attempts to erase the floor of mistakes. And when that floor is removed, a nation teeters over the abyss.
I’ve written before about the utility of regret, and the wise guardians of conscience and moral concern. These qualities prevent us from slipping back into harmful patterns. Without them, we risk self-deception, and the harm is magnified at scale.
Why we face our shadow
“of what has gone before”
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
But this isn’t only about governments or regimes.
It is also about us.
Every leader, every individual, carries a shadow. We deny our own failings, paper over our own mistakes, pretend we are infallible. But as I’ve explored in my post on Resistance to Change, when we protect ourselves from seeing what is uncomfortable, we also protect the very patterns that limit us.
The Immunity to Change framework shows this clearly: our hidden commitments (the shadow priorities we serve) must be named if we are to change. Pretending the shadow is not there doesn’t make us stronger; it makes us blind.
“From the Castle”
Visual Art from the Insightful Path
The path to insight
The practice, to grow your skills in facing the shadow, is simple, but not easy. When you have space, and a little time, think of your own failings, and:
Pause.
Name the shadow side of your self (your unskillfulness that leads to the failings) .
Ask what you can learn from this.
Earnestly linger there, with a courageous intent, to find how you could grow skilled enough, not to repeat the failings of the past.
Do this with your own failings, and when you feel up to it, do it with your team. If you are brave, do with deeper parts of your identity - your nationality, and do it, as a citizen, with your country’s history.
Pause, and linger, looking at the unskillfulness done across time. Do not turn away. The solutions we most need are only visible when we learn to look into the dark with clarity, not fear.
And if we can do this… if we grow skilled at seeing both, Human Brilliance and the shadow of our existence… then we, and the systems we are part of, can stand firmly, in the light, on the path toward insight.
If you want to know more about this, and are earnest in your desire to grow, why not reach out and set up a time to talk. As a coach, I help people like you, who want to bring into the world, their light - and learn to look to their shadows to do so.
