We spend much of our life trying to avoid failure, or at least giving other the perception that we don’t fail. When we do fail – especially publicly – the result is often a tragic down spiral. As a human race, I believe we handle failure more poorly than we have in the past. Be it that we live more public lives due to social media, shelter our kids a bit more, or today’s pressures to succeed are just greater, we are not coping with disappointments as well as our predecessors did. This trend must change.
“If you don’t fall, you aren’t going hard enough.” This is a common motto within the extreme sports community, of which we all need to emulate. Life is not meant to be lived in comfort, without risk. We are designed to step out on ledges, and sometimes fall off. We are also designed to pick ourselves back up, learn from the fall, and get back on that ledge. Instead, many of us avoid failure by living far from the ledges. But you see, failure is imminent even here, and if we don’t get practice with it, the fallout is even greater. We need to encourage each other to take risks and fail, especially our young people.
Change your mindset. Failure means you are taking risks to be more and should be applauded. Failure is an opportunity to learn something about yourself that you otherwise would not know. Failure is an opportunity to learn how to deal with failure. Failure is ultimately success.
Take risks. Fail. Learn from the fail. Repeat.
