Actress Ayanda Borotho has admitted that learning to acknowledge failure and taking the necessary lessons it brings has stood her in good stead.
Growing up as a model child, Ayanda said she always felt pressure not to disappoint her parents, which made her be hard on herself when she made mistakes.
“For me what failure was growing up was not being able to make a mistake and disappointing my parents … We are taught that it’s not OK to make mistakes,” she said in an interview on 702.
Now at 42, the actress and activist says she is teaching herself to view failure differently.
“Failure is a stepping stone, it’s about how you see it. See it half-full. When you feel like you are buried, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are buried, maybe you are planted, and that is something I had to teach myself. I see things in harvest rather than lack in seasons where I feel like I’m failing.”
“It doesn’t mean that I have mastered it. It means that I have awakened to it. I’m walking the journey, but it doesn’t mean that I have mastered it.”
Being a mother of a daughter, Ayanda is conscious of how she raises her child.
In her book Unbecoming To Becoming, Ayanda talks in chapter 14 about being a “rebel queen” which she believes her daughter embodies.
“It talks to raising girl children in our era and the system put in place to suppress their power … my daughter is one such queen. Train them young to own their power responsibly.”
Ayanda has been very intentional about her healing journey and has documented many of the lessons she learnt on social media, in addition to her book and seminars.
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