I read a lot of books about success, and the topic that comes up a lot in that arena is failure. That seems counter-intuitive, but it is ALWAYS there. I had an experience the other day I thought I'd share.
If you know me, you know I love to live a healthy lifestyle. This is a pic of my running crew this morning; my six year old #troll and my 14 year old guitar playing maniac, ran two miles with me. We love being healthy.
I get teased as being the CrossFit missionary, and I embrace that wholeheartedly, because I'm healthy, and most of those who tease me are not. I don't say that to lord it over anyone, I just like people to pay attention, and to get healthy. Anywho, at the gym the other day I was trying to exceed my personal record of 235 lbs. on a power clean, a weightlifting move. I failed five times. I pulled the bar high up to my chest, and could not get under the weight to catch it. I had two friends there, cheering me on, and giving me pointers.
On the sixth try, I got it! It wasn't the prettiest lift, but I hit it. What did I learn from this? 1. I would have NEVER reached that goal if I hadn't failed first, and failed several times. 2. Failure gave me a determination to succeed. 3. After the fourth fail, I had the thought "today isn't your day"; I sent sent that thought back to hell, because that's where it came from. 4. Surrounding myself with like-minded, successful people, with knowledge of that arena, pushed me and gave me insights I didn't previously have.
So, what's so wrong with failure?! Without failure, I wouldn't have known how to succeed. I embrace failure. I blogged on this a few years ago, and the link to that blog post is here. There is an awesome video there to watch, so please watch it. It's so important to teach our kids, and our co-workers, and anyone really, that failure is key to success, because that's how you learn to succeed!