  “Failure” is viewed by society in such a backwards way and its ruining it for everyone. We’ve failed the word failure… collectively. And its all our faults. When most people think of failure they think negative or permanent like there’s no coming back from it... "I'm not going to try salsa dancing... what if I suck... I'll never be able to try any other dance again...or I’ll literally die... I can't risk that". It paralyzes people from taking risks or challenging themselves. We are all guilty of looking at someone else’s failure and consciously or subconsciously feel a bit better about our lives. We “Monday Morning Quarterback” all the time… “That was such a dumb decision” or “I would have done it this way”. I’m trying to break that mold in me that society has created… watching the fall from grace of celebrities or seeing a car crash... no more I say… I’m coming around to a different approach. Listening to people like Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Gary V, Lewis Howes… all of these extremely successful people they welcome failure. It has fueled most of their success. I’m not saying that they purposely make stupid mistakes... they have learned to take calculated risks with 100% effort and dealing with whatever the results are... big difference. Most people gloss over this about them or other successful people. We dumb it down to the same narrative “well they got lucky” or “they have a gift” or “they are stronger then I am”... some of that may be true it’s not the full story. They have all worked extremely hard and we get to see the movie trailer of their life (as Tim said in drunk dial podcast). We get to see the successes of their stories… or if they go bankrupt and get addicted to Pokemon Go E!News will show that too... You see this with everyday people with social media pages. I’m most likely not going to post a selfie of me in gym shorts eating oatmeal for dinner out of a souvenir baseball cup because I don’t want to put myself in more debt. I might post a picture of me traveling a few weeks with something like “my office for the day” while sitting poolside… But the point is we want to avoid a certain appearance of failure… which in some cases is OK.. the fake it till you make it… visualizing, etc. and just being happy all the time. But that’s not how we grow… we need adversity and to be self-aware of failure when it happens… but even before that we need to think of ways where we can take successes from something failing. It’s not life or death or pass or fail you can take successes from any failure if you prepare before hand. Write down how X risk will be successful even if you end up quitting it or having to stop pursuing it. What can you take from that experience whether it’s developing a new skill, inspiring others or meeting new people etc. All in all I want to view things in my life less in an all or nothing fashion and more what can I learn or take away from this experience if I fall on my face. I’m off to go have oatmeal for lunch so I don’t go into more debt.  |
