We all slip on our goals and intentions from time to time.
In the culture I was raised in, failure is seen as a bad thing. A taboo almost.
"You failed the test."
"You didn't get the job."
"You lost the game."
It seems like we were trained to interpret these things as a gut-punch. But are they really so bad?
Absolutely not. I've heard it time and time again: successful people are the ones who didn't quit. Many of the people at the "top" of whatever their respective achievement is have failed more times than any of us have ever even tried.
Therefore I think it's really important to cultivate a better relationship with failure.
Instead of looking at failure as a hard-stop, look at it as getting one more stepping stone out of the way on your route to success. No one ever succeeded without failing a LOT.
Take the music industry as an example. When I used to produce and record music, there were always these stories of "overnight success." A new band or singer would show up on the radio and absolutely explode in popularity almost instantly. We'd all look around and wonder where they come from and which nefarious entity they made a deal with to get so lucky.
But every time I looked into these folks, it turned out they had been working hard on their craft for a LONG time. I'm talking 5, 10, 15, 20 years in some cases.
An overnight success is often just the fruit of a long history of effort & failure. They had to bite the bullet, power through the failed deals, the empty shows, and being told they'd never make it in order to hit the spotlight and make it big.
That's obviously an extreme example, but the idea applies: if you're unwilling or afraid to fail, you're very unlikely to succeed. They simply go hand-in-hand.
So today I challenge you to start cultivating a new relationship with failure. Don't look at it as a bad thing. Look at it as a necessary growing pain toward your true and final form. Whatever you're striving to do will require some sacrifice and some inconvenience, and that's all failure is. Without failure, there can never be success.
In the culture I was raised in, failure is seen as a bad thing. A taboo almost.
"You failed the test."
"You didn't get the job."
"You lost the game."
It seems like we were trained to interpret these things as a gut-punch. But are they really so bad?
Absolutely not. I've heard it time and time again: successful people are the ones who didn't quit. Many of the people at the "top" of whatever their respective achievement is have failed more times than any of us have ever even tried.
Therefore I think it's really important to cultivate a better relationship with failure.
Instead of looking at failure as a hard-stop, look at it as getting one more stepping stone out of the way on your route to success. No one ever succeeded without failing a LOT.
Take the music industry as an example. When I used to produce and record music, there were always these stories of "overnight success." A new band or singer would show up on the radio and absolutely explode in popularity almost instantly. We'd all look around and wonder where they come from and which nefarious entity they made a deal with to get so lucky.
But every time I looked into these folks, it turned out they had been working hard on their craft for a LONG time. I'm talking 5, 10, 15, 20 years in some cases.
An overnight success is often just the fruit of a long history of effort & failure. They had to bite the bullet, power through the failed deals, the empty shows, and being told they'd never make it in order to hit the spotlight and make it big.
That's obviously an extreme example, but the idea applies: if you're unwilling or afraid to fail, you're very unlikely to succeed. They simply go hand-in-hand.
So today I challenge you to start cultivating a new relationship with failure. Don't look at it as a bad thing. Look at it as a necessary growing pain toward your true and final form. Whatever you're striving to do will require some sacrifice and some inconvenience, and that's all failure is. Without failure, there can never be success.