That is the question!
You can’t have lived a day of life without bumping up against failure. Real or imagined, it looms around the corner waiting patiently to trounce on your next hope filled endeavor. Whether athletic, professional or esoteric, our dreams cannot be dreamt of without the gnawing possibility of their immediate evaporation.
Do we save ourselves the agony of eminent defeat by squashing them before they are realized or exert only a halfhearted effort because we know “it just wasn’t meant to be?” A self-fulfilling prophecy whose path we laid with sparkles and walked upon with trepidation. Welcome to failure-dom. Please step to the back of the line, we knew you’d be back.
If we are where we are because of where we have been then our past failures become our future successes, that is if we choose not to concede. Losing sucks! What we do in the face of its full-on tackle will determine every step we take forward from that moment. Not the act of failing itself, more the mental concession to our subconscious and the negative energy it perpetuates. Do we kick dirt on it and turn on our heels or dust off the ole shoes and embrace the next trepid ride?
I’ve done both but favor going down kicking and screaming. Fortunately, this pattern showed me the worth of the many bumps and bruises I endured. They revealed the submission to failure grew from insecurity and thrived in hesitation. I granted permission to question my strength, my ability and my self-worth. The consequential outcome fed hesitation like a spreading cancer stifling any glimmer of hope or resolve. It kept pointing its finger right back at me, the sole saboteur of my own future successes.
Connecting me and my actions to the outcomes, seemingly simple yet elusive, changed how I moved forward. I have had endless support in my life, but there have been times in both my business and writing endeavors that I was told to quit or give up or “you can never do that.” I am grateful for the challenge that emerged from their doubt. I had a point to prove! I dug in my heels deeper and pushed harder.
Fortunately, I was raised to see my life as limitless, everything is within reach. I know in my gut that I can do anything I put my mind to and had I quit before I failed, I would have never realized success. The beauty of life’s greatest successes is they emerge from the shadows of failure.
So, fight like hell in opposition. Put every ounce of effort into failing. Quitters never win because they avert any and all opportunity to fail. An opportunity to fail is not a failure, it is a chance to win.
I am fortunate to have grown through my failures. Why not throw in the towel, fall on the sword and concede defeat? Because no growth is found on Easy Street. The glass can’t be half full if there is a hole in the bottom. Failure in effort is a great success because of the lessons it reveals.
It is a huge win in my book.
