After years of chasing success and avoiding failure at all costs, a devastating burnout at thirty-six taught me what Carol Burnett knew all along—and what I desperately needed to learn before it was too late.
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I've been thinking a lot about failure lately and Carol Burnett's words keep echoing in my mind:
"You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it."
There's something deeply comforting about knowing that even someone as accomplished as Carol Burnett recognizes the necessity of falling. It's not just okay to fail; it's essential. Yet somehow, we've created a culture that treats failure like it's contagious, something to be avoided at all costs.
The gift of falling apart
When I was thirty-six, I had what you might call a spectacular crash. From the outside, everything looked perfect. Six-figure salary, corner office, the whole nine yards. But inside? I was drowning. The burnout hit me like a freight train, and suddenly I found myself in therapy, questioning everything I thought I knew about success.
That fall was brutal. But you know what? It was also the best thing that ever happened to me.
See, when you're forced to rebuild from the ground up, you get to choose which pieces to keep and which ones to toss. For me, that meant recognizing that my analytical mind wasn't just for spreadsheets and quarterly reports. It could be an asset for self-reflection too. Who knew?
The process reminded me of something I recently read in Rudá Iandê's new book, "Laughing in the Face of Chaos". He writes, "Fear is not something to be overcome, but an essential part of the human experience." That resonated deeply because my biggest fear at thirty-six wasn't actually losing my job. It was discovering who I'd be without it.
Learning to walk means learning to wobble
Think about actual toddlers for a second. Have you ever seen one learn to walk without falling? They wobble, they stumble, they plop down on their diapered bottoms countless times. And what do they do? They laugh, they cry, and then they get back up.
Somewhere along the way, we lose that resilience. We start believing that falling means failing, and failing means we're failures. But that's not how growth works.
When I finally made the decision to leave my corporate job at thirty-seven to pursue writing full-time, people thought I'd lost my mind. Trading financial security for uncertainty? In this economy? But here's what I knew that they didn't: I had already survived the falling down. The fear of starting over paled in comparison to the reality of staying stuck.
Trail running taught me this too. I picked it up at twenty-eight as a way to cope with work stress, and now I'm out there logging twenty to thirty miles a week. You want to talk about falling? Try navigating rocky terrain at dawn when your legs are already jelly. I've eaten dirt more times than I care to count. But each fall teaches me something about balance, about reading the trail, about my own limits and capabilities.
The survival instinct nobody talks about
Carol Burnett's quote highlights something crucial: "It helps to know that you can survive it." This isn't just motivational fluff. It's about building evidence for your own resilience.
Every time you fall and get back up, you're creating a data point. Your brain files it away: "Okay, that happened, and we're still here." Over time, these data points become a foundation of confidence that no success could ever provide.
I see this pattern everywhere now. The friend who went through a messy divorce and emerged stronger. The neighbor who lost their business during the pandemic and pivoted to something even better. The colleague who got laid off and finally pursued their passion project.
We're all survivors of something. The question is whether we recognize it.
Building your survival portfolio
So how do we get better at surviving our falls? How do we build that knowing that Carol Burnett talks about?
First, start small. You don't need to quit your job or make dramatic life changes. Maybe it's trying a new recipe and having it turn out terrible. Or signing up for a dance class where you'll definitely look ridiculous. The point is to practice falling in low-stakes situations.
Second, pay attention to your recovery time. Notice how quickly you bounce back from disappointments. Are you getting faster? That's growth, even if it doesn't feel like it.
Third, collect your survival stories. Write them down if you have to. That time you bombed a presentation but lived to tell the tale. The relationship that ended but didn't end you. The dream that died but led to something better. These aren't just memories; they're proof of your resilience.
The unexpected freedom of falling
Here's something nobody tells you about falling: it's liberating. Once you've fallen and survived, the fear of falling loses its grip on you. You start taking risks you wouldn't have considered before. You speak up in meetings. You set boundaries. You pursue dreams that seemed too big.
After my burnout and career change, I discovered a freedom I never knew existed. Without the constant pressure to maintain a perfect image, I could actually be myself. Messy, imperfect, real me. And surprisingly, that authenticity connected with people in ways my polished corporate persona never could.
Final thoughts
Carol Burnett's wisdom reminds us that falling isn't the opposite of success; it's a prerequisite for it. Every person you admire has a collection of falls behind them. The difference is they learned to see those falls as teachers rather than failures.
So the next time you find yourself face-down, metaphorically or literally, remember this: you're not failing, you're learning to walk. And more importantly, you're building evidence that you can survive whatever comes your way.
Take it from someone who's fallen more times than she can count and lived to write about it. The ground isn't as hard as you think, and you're stronger than you know. Sometimes the best thing that can happen is the falling down, because only then do you discover just how capable you are of getting back up.
After all, we're all just grown-up toddlers, still learning to walk through this complicated life. The only difference is now we know we can survive it. And that knowledge? That's everything.
Just launched: Laughing in the Face of Chaos by Rudá Iandê
Exhausted from trying to hold it all together?
You show up. You smile. You say the right things. But under the surface, something’s tightening. Maybe you don’t want to “stay positive” anymore. Maybe you’re done pretending everything’s fine.
This book is your permission slip to stop performing. To understand chaos at its root and all of your emotional layers.
In Laughing in the Face of Chaos, Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê brings over 30 years of deep, one-on-one work helping people untangle from the roles they’ve been stuck in—so they can return to something real. He exposes the quiet pressure to be good, be successful, be spiritual—and shows how freedom often lives on the other side of that pressure.
This isn’t a book about becoming your best self. It’s about becoming your real self.
