Happy Valentine's Day: why we love failure

An ode to failure:

Roses are red, violets are blue,

I face-planted hard, my pain was due.

My grand visions, gone and unjust,

My carefully laid plans, turned entirely to dust.

The truth: we must learn to love failure. If you don't love failure, you most certainly won't love the success that comes in the second part of your story. As you figure out what it is you love, why not love all of it?

The Power of Allowing Yourself to Fail

I don't know about you, but I really hate to fail. I am willing to do almost anything to avoid failing. I hate it. I am willing to do things I otherwise wouldn't want to do, only if it means I can avoid failing at something. It's not so much about not getting what I want, however. I think, in isolation, I can grapple with that outcome and figure out what to do next. The thing we seem to be afraid of is failing in front of others. We worry about what they'll think of us and our reputation. Our reputation is our brand, after all. But maybe instead of thinking about this in terms of a binary "pass, fail" set of options, what if the reputation is a set of options surrounding what you do about failure. And maybe you were putting entirely too much pressure on yourself to achieve one outcome over another. And so that is our struggle, our call to action. Fail - fail to allow yourself to grow. Fail - fail out of ...

To overcome failure, be a success.

Your story will be one about failure if you insist on defining it that way. Those words sound harsh, and they are. But the reality is that you are what you think you are. Are you a failure? Are you someone who's struggling through failure? Are you someone down on their luck? Or did you decide to "flip the switch" and decide that the failures do not define you? If you chose the latter, you made a good choice because the rest of your mind and body will follow. Our concious thoughts shape unconcious and subconcious states and behaviors. You know this. You can absolutely imagine things for yourself - both good and bad. They are as real as you want them to be. You give the meaning and power to those thoughts in a way that can make them into not just a reality, but a way of life. For better or for worse - that pendulum swings in both directions. Negative thinking shapes negative outcomes and positive thi...

My body failed - what's next? How to fix it.

My body is f*cked. What's the best way to proceed? Well, that's a tad complicated to answer - we're all snowflakes (translation: no, it's not that you're soft, but you are uniquely injured ). There aren't many worse feelings than knowing you are forever physically limited. And if you fit into that category: I am sorry. But here's the key: you cannot, and should not, feel sorry for yourself. It beats the alternative (you know, not having a living, breathing body with flowing, pumping blood). In this vein (pun intended), our goal is to use what we have. It's to work with the hand we have been dealt. It is to not stop at the first sign of danger - it is to see the danger, acknowledge it, and then move the fuck on. You are not on this earth to sit still. You are not on this earth to waste away. You are not on this earth to do anything other than to inch closer to your potential. And so yes, there have been moments where...

inthedougout

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