Failure, my biggest fear, the one thing that ruled my life. I know I feared failure every day. Feared disappointing my family, feared to show weakness, just feared to be anything but normal. Normal was something that didn’t stand out, didn’t stick out, didn’t cause any waves. I could blend it, do things on my own terms, and hide from the world. I am writing this because I feel a lot of people feel this way. They feel like they don’t want to risk messing up for fear that someone will make fun of them, think less of them, think them stupid, hell just about any reason. I was that person, and I know many others are feeling the same way right now. We only get one chance at this life and knowing that why the hell should we not take every chance we get to make it great. Why not go for it every single day? I read a quote, and I never remember where I hear them or who said them, I just know they mean a lot to me at that point or I wouldn’t remember. The quote goes something like this, “If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.” Now I use to be completely against quotes, but I also had a fixed mindset and thought I was super smart. I am quickly learning that anyone and everyone can teach you something if you’re willing to listen and learn from them. Now, this quote really hit home when I started thinking about the rut that my life had become. I say this past tense because I feel I’m doing better, but every day I have to remember to get outside of my comfort zone. I fail just about every day, hell lets just say every day. Something before that I promised myself I would never do I now realize I do every single day. That is a scary thing to think about if you think failure is final, but this is just not the case. I fail when I eat too much, I fail when I get upset with a rude person and let it bother me, I fail when I oversleep, I fail when I give up early on my last set at the gym, I fail when I forget to call my Mom, I fail when I forget someone’s birthday, I fail all the damn time. And guess what? It’s not a big deal. I eat too much, then I better have a damn good workout the next morning, I oversleep, well I better be productive and make sure to get to bed at a good time the next night, I forget a birthday, then a handwritten card and a phone call means way more than a text message anyway. The point is that failure is not the end, its just a step towards improvement. I recently read a couple of books that showed me this in a much better way than I could ever express here. This will continue to be a recurring theme for a while as reading (non-fiction) has truly changed my life. Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn, and The Obstacle Is the Way. I highly recommend reading these books and soon will put together a reading list of all the books that I’ve read and highly recommend, but for now, just know that if I talk about them they have had a meaningful impact in my life. These books did a great job in expressing to me the importance of not giving up, not thinking failure is final. When you can stop thinking that way, it really opens your eyes up to all the many great things you can do in your life. So this is me living what I’m saying, failing at a Blog until I get better at it. I hope for everyone’s sake that I do in fact get better at this, but for now just know that I’m going to continue to fail over and over while trying to help every single person I can.
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