Tough Love: Accepting Failure(s)

"You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take." –Wayne Gretzky

Ideally, you want to hit 100% of the shots that you take in life.  It's that moment when you know you've put your entire heart and soul into something.  Courage takes over.  Your palms are sweating a little bit, but you know that it is the right thing to do.  God has guided you to this very opportunity.  The pencil is in hand.  The time to train, the time to analyze has concluded.  Be careful not to misstep.  Don't think about mistakes.  You can't imagine failing or her saying "no."  Get the thought of failure out of your head.  Now you can't stop thinking about it.  The time comes to perform, and...

It's a complete wash.  She told you "no" after you worked up the courage to ask her on a date.  You didn't use the right form to push a 275 pound barbell off of your body.  The test you just took might as well have been in Arabic, and you would have understood just as much of it.  You started to stutter during the presentation, and you lost your nerve.  Everything starts to crash upon you, and no one is around to help.  You walk briskly to your apartment, sit down on your bed or couch, close your eyes, and...

You don't cry.  Crying hasn't been part of your game since Little League.  You sit down and think a moment.  Maybe you stand up and pace around.  Failure isn't an everyday occurrence for you, and most times it isn't an option.  You don't call anyone:  no one understands you right now.  Suddenly, deep in thought, you encounter all of the ways that it could have gone wrong, and you find your faults.  Was it just that you were inadequate?  Did something go wrong with implementation?  Was it just bad luck?  Maybe bad timing?  Maybe now it's time to talk to someone.  But to whom...?  Who will understand...?

I really hate failure.  Always have, always will.  I've gotten so far in my life up to this point, and it's hard to talk about the times when I made a decision that didn't pan out well.  Some of the greatest pictures, experiences and sensations of my life came from the time right before the moment of failure. Do I expect to succeed every time?  No, but I want to succeed where I've put forth the most effort, and am not fazed by failure in the places where I haven't.  The worst is when I think I've got it in the bag, and something comes along and pulls the rug out from under me.  Spontaneity is not a favorite of mine, and the frequent curve balls of life today add gray hair quicker to my head than the first 23 years combined.  

But if we hate failure so much, what makes us get back up on the horse and try again?  Is it because we are compelled by our peers, or because we really think we have a chance?  Do we actually learn from failure?  If so, what are its lessons?  What happens if we don't learn from these lessons?  To what extent should we insure a decision that we think might fail?  

We try to do things that sometimes seem out of reach because we can't bear the thought of not having tried.  I can't bear the thought of skipping class even though I'm already late, because I will spend the entire day thinking "what if?"  I can't imagine not trying to bench press some weight that I might fail at because then I won't really know what my maximum is, and where I could go to further my progress.  I ask the girl out because a "no" is still better than beating myself up over someone I really wanted who could have been a "yes."  Why, then, do we accept the failure and move on?  

Failure isn't the end; rather, it's a beginning.  It's a beginning of the understanding of our limitations.  From there, we find ways to make progress.  This is where I meet "The Great One" and his philosophy on trying:  yes, I didn't score a goal this time around, and there are probably myriad reasons why I failed.  But there is no in quitting where our hearts are set.  Our hearts will heal if it wasn't meant to be, but only we are the ones who can find that out.  Never let anyone tell you that you will fail, and then believe them.  Eleanor Roosevelt once said:  "No one can make me feel inferior without my own consent."  Consent to fail, and there's no beginning.  There is only despair.

For tomorrow, think of a time in your life when you failed.  Take five minutes of your day and really think about that failure.  Ask yourself questions from this blog, or something that you made up yourself.  Don't take it as a time to beat yourself up, especially if you've already resolved it and moved on.  Rather, if that failure is resolved, what did you learn from it?  Do you know someone else who is going through the same thing?  Share it with that person.  Use the "feel, felt, found, find" method:

• I understand how you feel (after, obviously, listening to them)
• Here is how I felt in a similar situation (hardest part; make sure you've truly internalized the other person's problem)
• This is what I found (you overcame your failure; now it's your turn to help someone overcome theirs)
• Here's what I think you will find (not assuming too much about this person; rather, show them that there's hope in their life)

Use your acceptance of failure to provide a brick or two of your life to help someone else repair of theirs.  Take care, everyone.

Leaving It All Out on the Field

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me."  -Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck's words strongly resonate in my mind as a way that I would like to conduct my life as a productive adult.  My story starts in the past:  as many of you know, I played American football when I was in high school.  For six years (grades 7-12), I played for teams that enjoyed a wide arrays of results, from one-win seasons to appearances in the PIAA state semifinals.  Football was a release back in those days:  it helped me to get out any aggressive streaks that I had as a teenager while doing something productive.  I was always a big guy, and playing football for me was a way to use the talents and advantages that being naturally big carried.  I had two major goals by the time I reached high school:  1) to gain a starting position on the varsity team, and 2) to reach a championship that my high school had never reached.

In the end, I achieved both of them.  By sophomore year, I started on the defensive line; and by senior year, my team made it to the PIAA semifinals.  The journey was never easy, for sure:  we spent afternoon after afternoon in the weight room and on the track after school in the off-season, breaking records and missing targets.  I remember at one point, I had to run nearly a mile and a half after training after doing squats and sprints the previous two hours. Waking up in the summer to go to work in the morning took a full breakfast and at least two Advil tablets to dull the aches.  With all of the time and energy that I had invested in this sport, there was no way I was going to graduate high school without achieving something significant.  Therefore, that final season I made a promise:  no matter the outcome, I was going to leave everything out on the field.  If I wasn't exhausted after a game, I didn't work hard enough.

Throughout my university and graduate school life, I have tried to push this same tenet on the different activities that I undertake.  If I am going to succeed at something, I need to give all of the expertise and diligence that I have now; otherwise, I will leave from that opportunity with regrets.  If I know that there was one thing I could have done to help myself get a better grade or gain a leadership position which I now don't have, it's a tough pill to swallow.  Life stretches everyone thin, but we must look at demanding times of life more as opportunities to achieve great things, and less as times of great burden.

My advice for today, readers, is this:  Take inventory of all the outstanding commitments and promises that you have made to this date.  Put them out on the table, on the board, anywhere you feel that you can organize them.  Decide for yourself which ones are the most important, and which ones you need to accomplish the soonest.  Then go out and seek to finish them, limiting your distractions.  If you have to turn off your cell phone for an hour, do so.  If you have to give up Facebook for 48 hours, do so.  These things are extremely useful, but they carry a key trade-off:  they are very useful distractions.  We commit ourselves to so many different things in a given day, and even those who exercise good time management skills need to figure out how much energy they must devote to a given task.  My personal challenge is to take the example of my high school football career and use it to finish out the work I have to complete for this semester.  I have to understand that I embraced all of my goals for a particular reason, and constant reminder of those ideals is what is going to propel me to realize them.

Take the time to watch this speech from the movie Friday Night Lights.  In his halftime speech during the Texas AAAAA state championship, Coach Gary Gaines alludes to leaving everything out on the field.  At the end of the day, we must be able to look our friends, family, colleagues and clients in the eye and let them know that we gave them everything we possibly could to achieve our goals.  If we can give everything we have, then win or lose, we have gained our dignity, and no one can take our pride.

The Thrill of Victory... over What?

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."  -Ayn Rand

The 20th century philosopher and intellectual giant Ayn Rand and I do not agree often in terms of how we view the world, but I found this quote to be powerful, in the spirit of resurrecting my blog.  Think about the last time you made a goal.  What was the payoff to achieving it?  Did you believe for one moment that it would make you better relative to someone else, or better overall?  Do you find more satisfaction in beating others in competition, or in simply bettering yourself relative to yesterday?

Tonight (~1:30 in the morning) I reflect on this very idea.  Why did I start this blog back in August?  What caused me to lose focus and practically abandon it?  At this point in mid-November, have I really made myself into a "better man?"  If so, relative to what?  

To answer this question, I looked at why (again) I really wanted to undertake this project.  I stopped making judgments over my progress in early October, largely because I had convinced myself that I was too busy to write or take better care of myself.  Reminding myself of the goals tonight, however, made me feel ashamed.  These are legitimate goals:  for instance, dropping 25 pounds and running a few times per week is essential to making a smooth transition to living in Bogotá because it is easier to adjust to higher altitudes when in shape.  I'm also trying to control my weight for the sake of my joints in the long run, as well as my back.  It's going to be a lot easier to get up in the morning at 200 pounds than 225.  

Spiritually speaking, I'm still looking for that renaissance.  Though I've been going to church on Sundays, I'm still looking for the key to deepening my personal spirituality.  Books and stories are great, but they wear off over time.  Routines get stale.  My goal for the month of November is to make it back to confession, something I did last September.  A good penance sorts out my mind, as long as I don't do it too often.  If anyone has any recommendations for books I can read (gradually), feel free to drop a comment on my post.  

Over the next week, I'm going to continue to focus on inspirational quotes and philosophers.  Each one will come with an idea that I either agree or disagree with, and I will try to relate them to my pursuit to become a "better man."  Per Rand, I gained from this quote the concept that a victory is not going to come from doing better for someone else.  I don't try to get good grades because I want to do better than my colleagues:  the point is to do better than I did last semester.  The point of getting into shape isn't to be better-looking or in better shape than people around me:  it's to make myself better off in the long run.  Spiritually, I will always acknowledge that I am among the worst of sinners, and that each step I take in the right direction is but one of a thousand that I should be taking.  Ms. Rand is right in this regard:  we should be focused on achievement, not beating the person next to us.  Take that thought into consideration as you push for something great this week.  Have a look at the video from Brian Tracy below if you (like me) are in the market to develop good habits once again.  Take care!