We Can’t Always Succeed

Act 160:

“It’s never too late… To Fail

We can’t progress without failing. Fear of failure holds us back. Allow yourself to possibility of failing. Most successful people fail far more often than they succeed. But they persist. Failing is just improving the odds of succeeding next time.” – Patrick Lindsay

Quote in book: “I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.” ~ John Keats

If at first we don’t succeed, try try again. Failure (regardless of what people say) can be a good thing. If we never failed, we’d never learn some valuable lessons. We would never learn humility. I think we would also lose the appreciation of certain joys in life. Because succeeding after you’ve failed, always give a greater sense of appreciation and a gives a greater feeling of accomplishment. It’s always a little sweeter when we have to work for it a little more

So let’s say it’s possible not to fail. But how would never failing really look like? Wouldn’t that just get old really fast? Does that inherently mean that we couldn’t have any games or events where there were winners and losers? How is that even possible? That just takes all the fun out of life. There are winners and there are losers. We can’t all be winners all the time.

Take football this season. It’s awesome that the Packers are 8-0, but on the other side of the coin, the Colts are 0-9. It sucks that they are losing now, but it could all be for a reason. If their season continues down this path and they get the number 1 pick in the draft, they could get a great quarterback in Andrew Luck. So, yes it’s painful to watch them lose every week (not that I’m a fan. I actually feel sorry for their fans…) I feel like there is a lesson to be learned by the Colts organization of this epic failure. Don’t ever let a diva like Peyton Manning take every snap during practice. Condition your defense a little better, so they don’t give up those third quarter leads and make sure you freaking pick someone to replace peyton when he retires and pick him now, so he can be groomed under peyton, like Rodgers was groomed under Farve. Oh and what do you know, what do Rodgers and Luck have in common? They are both from the Pac-10/12 conference.

Failure is all about timing. Maybe it’s just not the right time for you to succeed and it was someone else’s turn that time. Maybe it’s not the right project or the right match. It will eventually be your turn. So continue to work on improvements learned from past failures to succeed. Continue to strive for that “win” and never never give up after a failure. There is always a next time or a way to put a positive spin on almost every failure. So let’s start looking at things w/ a more positive light and get some “WINS!!”