| LIFESTYLE | You. Need. To. Fail.

Ask any successful person the secret behind their accomplishments, and they’ll tell you something like hard work, dedication, and all those other conventional answers that are supposed to motivate you, but actually make your own goals seem further off than they are. They will tell you to study hard, and to ask questions. They’ll tell you to place yourself around certain people and put yourself in certain circumstances, which are all very important parts of having a successful journey, but they don’t tell you how to learn to be successful.

You have to fail

In some cultures, its considered bad luck to get everything right the first time around. If things come to you too easily, you don’t learn the discipline of hard work. Failing (at the time) seems like such a burden to experience; its like all your hard work (or lack of hard work) means absolutely nothing.

But here’s the twist….

Failing, losing, breaking, and taking backwards steps are sooo important because you need to learn what you’ve done well at, and you need to know what you need to get better at. When you first learned to walk, shoot a ball, tie your shoe... these things seemed impossible at first. But you needed to fall forwards so that your body can be strong enough to hold up that big head. You needed to shoot 100 shots and miss the rim and the net so that your arms can grow out of being pencil sticks. You needed to trip over your shoe laces so that you would remember to get them tied (plus its just bad fashion).

Failing is a lot different than not trying, lets clear that up right here. If you aren’t making conscious actions EVERYDAY to accomplish your goal, then don’t come crying to Facebook and your diaries about why life is treating you like a reject. Actions first.  But If you’re not failing, you’re losing. IF you’re not failing, you aren’t learning something new.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you are an old man who decides to be a Rockstar, and you fail and fail and fail, then MAYBE your direction is a little misguided. Not saying you need to give up trying to be a Rockstar, but maybe the road might be a little smoother if you tried to be a priest 😊 but you wouldn’t know either of these things if you didn’t try.

So I say that to say this: If you are coming up short in something in your life, if you are trying to accomplish something that doesn’t seem to be working, ask yourself how many times you’ve failed. Then determine whether you are actually trying. Then see where you’ve failed, and find out what you don’t know.

Then you try again, and you get a little better. You try again, and you learn a little more. You try again, and eventually you succeed.

Stay motivated family x