Failing is okay...

I won’t ever try to pass myself off as an expert in anything other than myself, but I want to share some of the wisdom I’ve learned along the way and hopefully from my lifetime of failing some of you can glean something useful. I don’t mind saying that I am a person who has failed in life repeatedly and will continue to do so, because so much more is learned from failure than from success. At all levels, in any industry, failure is the driving force behind evolution and refinement but in our society we still demonize failing and my belief is that the constant barrage of “perfect” people on social media further eats away at those who are just trying to do a little bit better. There is a cost for success, but not every failure is a true setback-I contend that most are not.

Let us take a trip back in the time machine to me in the ninth grade. I was then a doughy 260-270 pounds without an ounce of knowledge about training or nutrition, but I was in weight lifting class because I wanted to better myself. At that age I knew I wanted to be a pro wrestler and I knew I had to be in shape, so what better place to learn than in school, right? Fast forward to the middle of the semester and I get dared to get in the squat rack under 315 (if I recall correctly) which, of course, I couldn’t possibly squat because I’ve never squatted before! I had no idea what to do with the weight except to “sit down” and stand back up. Of course the weight nearly crushed me and thanks to Coach I got saved. Though he berated me for being so naive, that was a pivotal moment and one that I go back to a lot in life.

How often have we met with “failure” and never gone back to try again? I put the word in quotations because what I did on that fateful afternoon in the weight room was not a failure, it was just stupidity. To say it was a failure would mean that it was an honest attempt at completing or achieving something and it wasn’t. Many times we rush headlong, completely unprepared, into a situation and get knocked on our ass and then rationalize our lack of success by saying that it wasn’t meant to be or other such nonsense. There is so much imaginary pressure on people these days to excel at nearly everything, but there never seems to be any zeal about education, preparation or planning.

My first attempt in learning to squat, or F.A.I.L if you will, could have derailed me if I wasn’t truly committed to mastering the art of lifting weights and changing my teenage life. However, I had bigger dreams in mind and knew that if I never learned to squat, among other things, that I’d never have any hope in achieving anything I had laid out in my fantasies. I didn’t let the near-death experience, the embarrassment, the laughing classmates or the angry coach keep me away from that raggedy ass squat rack and I’m proud to say that I became a halfway decent squatter over the years and those same kids that laughed at me couldn’t touch my numbers or my tenacity.

We have to make sure that our eagerness to do something, whether that be a concrete thing like a contest or weight loss goat or an abstract thing like simply losing weight, be doomed to true failure because we didn’t set ourselves up properly. Take out a sheet of paper, write down what you want to do (be honest and dream big) then start breaking down what it will take to get you to that particular endzone. It might be diet, training or further planning, but achieving anything worthwhile takes more than effort, you must have a plan in mind and you must make meaningful steps toward that goal.

Until next time, keep moving forward-like Rocky Balboa said, that’s how winning is done!