Failure & Success: Be The Catalyst
BECOME IGNORANT TO FAILURE, SO STUBBORN AND CONFIDENT
THAT YOU WILL SUCCEED THAT THE WORDS FAILURE HAVE
NO MEANING TO YOU.
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We were not born the perfect specimen, we were born malleable, empty vessels full of potential to be nurtured, manipulated and moulded. It is through opportunity, experience and growth that we learn how to succeed and fail. It is through failure that some of the greatest lessons in life are learnt. I was told once by a smart old man "it is inevitable that we will fail, but we must be willing to evaluate and learn a lesson from those failures. In doing this we can overcome and become."
The thing about failure is that it can grow into a fear that controls and eats away at your confidence. As long as you allow your failures to consume you. It will hinder your growth in whatever you are trying to achieve. The mind is a powerful thing and you have to feed it with thoughts and feelings that spawn purpose.
I will be honest with you and tell you, for a long time,I was afraid to pursue anything that could cause me pain or the feelings of disappointment and failure. I was unsure of how I would react to these experiences. You see I have always trusted that God would show me the path I should walk in life, forgetting that I had to have courage to take first steps in a direction in order to be guided onto the path that was meant for me.
Somewhere along the way I developed the tenacity to use the chip on my shoulder about the feelings my father had about my intelligence, the racism and ignorance I had experienced my whole life up to to make a point. I told myself, "I WILL NOT LOSE!"
"Be bold.
Challenge yourself.
Don’t settle for being average.
Take a chance and walk into the unknown.
Set a bar for yourself that has no limit."
That may sound like just another stereotypical motivational speech about never giving up and following your dreams. Hey, If that’s the misconception you have about this, that’s not it and neither was the intention I had. It’s more some about the realization that failure shouldn’t hold anyone back and that failing is sometimes important. Sometimes pushing is all you need to do, push the bar and challenge the norm.
“They say the human body can only be pushed so far. I say if you push hard enough the body will respond. If you push hard enough then maybe, just maybe you can fly.” - Gavin Abrahamson
Even though this is purely from a former student-athlete and now coaches perspective. The best advice I can give is keep pushing the barrier. In everyday life, obstacles will always arise even for the greatest of minds and those individuals would not have been capable of becoming great without being challenged at one point or another. Understanding the challenges that come with success and failure becomes a small part of the process.
In all honesty, success can never truly be enjoyed if there is no struggle, no failure, no adversity to overcome. There is not much in life that comes easy that serves to satisfy us completely. Every success becomes even more deserving and cherished if accomplished through any of these avenues. We are ambitious people, we are never satisfied with simple successes, and we should never settle for one accomplishment.
As athletes, this applies to us specifically: when we achieve a goal, we embrace it, and then we go back to the office and analyze and find areas for improvement. We then re-evaluate and try do it better the next time around. There is only a pinnacle if we allow their to be one physically and mentally. Be inspired. Refuse to be a play-it-safer. Be anything else but a shadow walker, be the light. Lead the way or at least attempt to challenge your deepest darkest fears. Conquer them. No one else said it better than Marianne Williamson, "Your playing small does not serve the world."
Become ignorant to failure. Be so stubborn and confident that you will succeed - that the words failure have no meaning to you. So really what you should do until that success comes along is prepare, study, educate and then when the opportune moment comes you will not know what failure and what it means. At the exact moment it may just become a thing of the past.
I guess in the end what I am trying to say is: do not let the fear of failure control your actions or your life.
Fear holds people back from attempting to achieve and reach their goals and dreams. If you dedicate yourself to something failure just becomes a pebble on the road that you are paving to your dreams.
