My low-light reel
A soulful inventory of every “no” that carried me here
Chapter 12
Written by every version of me who refused to quit.
Why we’re allergic to failure
Success is the neon marquee of our generation.
Scroll for ten seconds and you’ll see all the greatest hits: IPO glow-ups, 30-Under-30 halos, promotions, product-launch fireworks, crowns and digital badges, yacht-deck influencer selfies from Cannes, lemon and olive-tree Tuscany engagement shoots, and LinkedIn names long enough to need a carry-on for the extra diplomas.
Our brains gulp it down, because, well, dopamine never met a brag it didn’t like.
Psychologists call it upward social comparison: when we see people who are “doing better,” the reward circuitry in the brain fires alongside regions linked to envy and self-evaluation.¹ A tiny dopamine hit, followed by the low-grade ache of I’m not enough.
Media producers know this. I used to be one of them.
When I anchored the evening news, the running order followed a predictable rhythm: tragedy, outrage, uplift.
End with a rescue puppy or a centenarian marathoner, and viewers would return the next night, cortisol soothed by oxytocin.
There’s a second trick, too: downward comparison. Show an audience someone failing spectacularly, and they feel a strange kind of relief: “At least my life isn’t that messy.”
Studies show these stories spike feelings of superiority, sometimes even a flicker of schadenfreude.² In other words, we keep watching because someone else’s disaster becomes our nervous system’s exhale.
And we Greeks have a word for that. Epicaricacy, a rarely used English term borrowed directly from the Greek epichairekakia (ἐπιχαιρεκακία), first noted by Aristotle himself. It means joy at another’s misfortune, from epi (upon), chara (joy), and kakon (evil).
Not because we’re inherently unkind, but because, for one charged second, someone else’s failure reassures us of our own survival. Their fall becomes proof that we’re still standing. That maybe, we’re safe. And in a world wired for constant comparison, that fleeting sense of superiority is its own kind of high.
Success stories provoke admiration and jealousy. Failure stories provoke relief and superiority.
Either way, we stay glued to the screen, and to the stories unfolding next to us, and we keep hiding our own imperfect middles, because we fear becoming someone else’s cautionary tale.
Life’s bloopers and the low-light reel
A few days ago organizational-psychology rock-star and professor at the Wharton School of the University, Adam Grant dropped a LinkedIn post titled “My low-light reel.”
He listed the teaching jobs that rejected him, the TED talks that said no, the hundred journal articles that never saw daylight, and then wrote:
“No one’s life is a highlight reel. Character isn’t visible in our triumphs alone, it’s revealed by the hardships we endure.”
That line sent a small electrical storm through my nervous system, because the idea isn’t new, but it is chronically ignored.
Tina Seelig, a Stanford entrepreneurship professor, has assigned “failure resumés” to her students for over a decade. The exercise: catalogue your biggest academic, professional, and personal flops, then mine them for strategy. In her words, the point is to ask, “What am I going to do differently next time?”
Leadership scholar Chaveso “Chevy” Cook, Ph.D. goes further, he shares his failure resumé with every new team he leads. The vulnerability becomes a shortcut to psychological safety: I’ll show you my bruises first, so you know it’s safe to show yours.
Even venture-capital giant Bessemer keeps an Anti-Portfolio, a running list of great investments they missed, to stay humble and keep learning.
So here’s mine. My attempt at the second one online. Getting bolder and braver with every draft. Not a chronicle of triumphs, but a love letter to every stumble, falter, and detour that taught me to rise again.
My Failure Resumé
(Unedited, exactly as it belongs.)
Failed my uni entry exams. Landed in a school I wasn’t “supposed” to.
Failed to give those exams a second shot. Life had other plans.
Failed my 20s because I had to grieve my childhood. (So was it really failure?)
Failed my 30s to social anxiety, self-doubt’s unshakable grip, and the loneliness I mistook for fate.
Failed my younger self a thousand times. Making it up to her now.
Failed my driving license three times, passed on the fourth, with a tranquilizer.
Failed to speak kindly to myself for years. Not anymore.
Failed many relationships by pointing fingers. Turns out, I was the storm.
Failed to stay in a career that no longer fit, even when it looked good on LinkedIn.
Failed to stop shaking while anchoring news to millions, but showed up anyway.
Failed countless job interviews, rejected again and again by roles that weren’t meant for me.
Failed to protect my peace in toxic rooms. Learned how to leave with softness intact.
Failed to say “no” for years. Now it rolls off my tongue with grace.
Failed to market myself, until I realised no one’s coming to rescue my worth.
Failed to stay small. Still unlearning that one, every single day.
Failed to go viral. But leaving impact in the places that matter.
Failed to pivot gracefully. Reinventing out loud, with heart racing and voice shaking.
Failed to keep myself together, so I built a newsletter to carry the chaos, and therapy became my co-pilot for the last 8 years.
Failed to rest. Until my nervous system begged me to start over.
Failed the myth that I had to be one thing. I’m multitudes. Still unfolding. Still becoming.
And still, I write. I grow. I burn. I build.
⬇ Download your free Failure-Resumé template
How about you? Want to turn your “oops” into insight? ⬇️
Grab the Failure Resumé template, free. Use my exact framework (prompts, cues, reflection questions) to audit your flops, celebrate the lessons, and fuel your comeback.
“I measure my growth not by what I achieved, but by what I survived and turned into wisdom.”
Download the template and start your own low-light reel today.
After-glow: why this matters
Social-comparison research shows that success stories trigger a spike of admiration and envy in the ventral striatum, while dramatic failure tales trigger relief and a flicker of superiority. Audiences stay hooked because anything feels better than boredom. But neither envy nor relief teaches us how to stay present in the messy, experimental middle. That’s why a public failure resumé is radical. It refuses both glamour-envy and disaster-porn.
It says: Here’s everything that cracked me open, and I’m still here.
When I anchored prime-time news, producers knew the formula: tragedy → outrage → uplift. Viewers left feeling both alarmed and soothed. What we never aired was the in-between, the near-misses, the half-written updates, the humbling rewrites. In real life, that middle is where growth actually is living. That’s it. That’s the space. And sharing it makes the story human instead of hypnotic.
So if your worth currently hangs on a highlight reel, borrow a page from Grant, Seelig, and Cook:
Draft your own failure resumé. Treat it as R&D for the soul.
Share one line publicly, or with a trusted circle. Watch shame lose altitude in daylight.
Extract the pattern. What did each miss teach about your learning curve, your boundaries, your next brave question?
And the only test is this: Did you stay curious enough to keep showing up?
⏯️ Quick break from the failure reel to ask you something that matters.
👉 What’s currently making it difficult to speak up, show up, or write what you really want to say?
👉 What are the challenges you’re facing in expressing yourself, at work, online, or even with yourself?
I’d love to hear.
⬇️ Vote in the poll below, then feel free to drop a comment or, if it feels safer, send me a DM.
Either way, I’m listening.☺️
Failure, worth & the disappearing act
Most of us were taught, from classrooms, headlines, podium speeches, that worth is a medal earned at the finish line. Succeed and you get a sticker. Fail and you become homework for someone else’s motivational keynote. The trouble is neurological as much as cultural. The brain encodes social rejection the way it encodes physical pain;³ to protect ourselves we anaesthetise, avoid risks, curate. We aim for flawlessness not because it fulfils us, but because it keeps the anterior cingulate from lighting up like a warning flare.
So after a public stumble we do something subtle: we erase ourselves.
We shrink ambitions to “reasonable” size.
We pre-reject ideas so no one else can.
We ghost opportunities that might end in another no.
The self we show online fossilises into highlight-reel amber while the living, breathing human retreats backstage, safer, lonelier, smaller. Yet every study on learning agility says the opposite: repeated, well-reflected failure (what researchers term deliberate practice with feedback loops) is the single fastest path to mastery.⁴ The resumé of bombs, belly-flops and spectacular misfires is the richer data set, provided we don’t translate it into a verdict on our identity.
A broadcaster’s confession, learning to fail on-air
Moments before the red tally light blinked on, my voice found a tremor the audience never heard, but I did. The teleprompter rolled through its polished parade of triumphs and tragedies, but inside, I was living my own split-screen: one side the composed presenter, the other a girl with shaking knees and a racing heart, paralysed by anxiety, a feeling I’ve known all too well.
I believed the shake was failure, proof I wasn’t built for prime time. So I doubled down on poise. Ironed every vowel. Memorised every intro. Stacked more achievements onto the highlight reel.
But what I didn’t know then is what behavioural scientists call the “illusion of transparency”: we dramatically overestimate how much others can see our inner chaos.⁵ Viewers weren’t tuning in for perfection. They were tuning in for presence. That tiny quiver, the one I worked so hard to erase, made the headlines human. It made me feel less like a presenter and more like someone sitting next to them on the sofa, sharing stories from the neighbourhood. Not reporting at them, but narrating with them.
That breakthrough rewired something in me. I realised the only person grading my performance…was me.
The resumé line that matters is not “anchored without shaking,” but “anchored while afraid, and kept the camera rolling.”
Failing forward, live, became a practice: proof that a wobble can coexist with worth.
Practices for Failing Forward, work that muscle
We’ve unpacked why celebrating only our highs leaves us brittle, and how broadcasting only polished triumphs starves us of true connection. Before we close this chapter, let’s build muscle memory for failing forward. Below are six quick practices, each takes five minutes or less and can fit into any part of your day, whether you’re at your desk or on the go.
How to use them:
Pick one that speaks to you this week.
Schedule a reminder or set a timer.
Do it immediately after your next “oops” moment.
Record the insight on your Failure Resumé (or a sticky note).
✦ 1. The 24-Hour Replay
Why it works: Writing about an emotional moment within a day helps your brain re-encode it as learning, not threat.
5-Minute Steps: Set a timer for five minutes. Jot down:
What happened
How it felt
One tweak for next time
Close the doc, no edits, no judgment.
✦ 2. Reverse Applause Audit
Why it works: Celebrating failures alongside wins normalizes imperfection and dissolves shame.
5-Minute Steps: Grab coffee (real or virtual) with a peer. Exchange one recent win, and one fresh failure. Then clap louder for the failure.
✦ 3. Two-Minute Nervous-System Reset
Why it works: Extended exhales stimulate the vagus nerve, sending a safety signal to your brainstem.
5-Minute Steps: Inhale for 4 counts, hold 2, exhale for 8 counts, repeat six times. Then re-open the email, draft, or idea you were about to abandon.
✦ 4. Micro-Quit of the Week
Why it works: Letting go of tiny perfection rituals frees up mental space for real creativity.
5-Minute Steps: Choose one micro-habit to quit, for example:
Skip the final polish on a slide/presentation
Send the first draft as-is
Don’t reply to every single email
Wear yesterday’s outfit again
Notice: the world keeps spinning.
✦ 5. Future Headline Flip
Why it works: Reframing worst-case scenarios into breakthrough headlines shifts your narrative from fear to possibility.
5-Minute Steps: Write two mock headlines, six months from now:
“How my X flop led to Y breakthrough”
“Why public failure sparked Z collaboration”
Feel the fear transform into momentum.
✦ 6. Kind-Voice Loop
Why it works: Self-compassion recruits your brain’s care network and quiets the threat response.
5-Minute Steps: Record a 30-second voice memo you’d send a friend after their failure. Play it back to yourself right after your own stumble. Let that kindness land twice.
Each of these small rituals rewires your relationship with failure, from verdict to vital data. Pick one, practice it, and add the takeaway to your ongoing Failure Resumé. Then watch as your future flops become your fiercest springboards.
Where half-finished pages breathe
We’ve walked through the anatomy of failure and practiced failing forward, now let’s rest in the place where stories go to breathe. Here, in the unfinished margins, life writes its truest verses. Lay down your cracked sentences; I’ll lay down mine.
We’ll stitch doubt into possibility, tremors into trust, no erasers allowed.
The world is drowning in glossy epilogues; it’s parched for breathing drafts that still bleed.
Join me in the draft, and let’s prove that the only failure worth fearing is the one we never let ourselves tell.
Next week?
How do you forgive the girl who thought failure meant she didn’t deserve love?
And how do you write new lines that make self-love worth the stumbles?
The Part 2 of Love Thyself (Eventually) is coming!
We’ll explore how shame lodges in muscle and memory, how to reparent the part of you taught to vanish, and daily rituals that turn each misstep into acts of return.
I’ll share the tools I wish I’d had when every “too much” felt like a verdict.
Until then, hold this truth: failures don’t define your finale, they nourish the roots of your worth.
Until next week,
Gloriously yours,
Eleni
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Magnetic openers that hook with heart before it starts
Reflection prompts to surface the truth you didn’t know was there
CTA & closer swipe files for endings that land
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Wrestling with failure, learning to love yourself, or simply yearning for a voice that truly reflects who you are? This storytelling toolkit is the resource you’ve been looking for.
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This is my first, raw, honest toolkit, I’d love to hear what you think.
Every Monday at 12:30 CEST, the Glorious Fail will meet you where you are, ready to disrupt, challenge, and rebrand failure.
There are plenty of ways to support the Glorious Fail:
→ If this landed a little too close to home, give it a like.
→ If you have thoughts, feedback, or just want to say hi, drop a comment.
→ And If it cracked something open and want to spread the word, hit that restack button below.
The Glorious Fail is just getting started, and every interaction brings it to life. Let’s fail forward, together. Rebrand failure. Reclaim the story. Rewrite what comes next.
References & Further Reading
1. Upward Social Comparison & Dopamine
Campbell-Meiklejohn, D. K., Bach, D. R., Roepstorff, A., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2010). How the opinion of others affects our valuation of objects. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(1), 60–68.
2. Schadenfreude & Downward Comparison
Fischer, P., & Brähler, E. (2022). Social discontent as schadenfreude: The hedonic consequences of others’ misfortunes. Journal of Media Psychology, 34(2), 65–75.
3. Social Rejection as Pain
Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The neural bases of social pain: Evidence for shared representations with physical pain. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(2), 87–92.
4. Deliberate Practice & Learning Agility
Ericsson, A. K. (2020). The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
5. Illusion of Transparency
Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V. (2000). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others’ ability to read one’s emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 503–516.
6. Polyvagal Theory & Vagal Tone
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton.
7. Self-Compassion & Neural Care Systems
Gilbert, P. (2010). Compassion Focused Therapy: Distinctive Features. Routledge.
8. Bessemer’s Anti-Portfolio
Bessemer Venture Partners. (n.d.). Anti-Portfolio. Retrieved from https://www.bvp.com/anti-portfolio
9.Inspired by Adam Grant’s “My low-light reel” post (May 2025).
Wow. This is such a unique take on failing and I love the intro — thanks for make me really think! 💙
Και εγω το εύχομαι! Αυτά που γράφεις είναι πολύ όμορφα! Καλή συνέχεια 😊