The fear of failure will stop you from achieving success. That fear will stop you from even making an attempt. We tend to get into our own heads at times and begin to say “what if.” What if the thing that you want to happen, doesn’t happen? Even worse, you allow yourself to think about it for so long that you talk yourself out of it. Now you have no idea of what would have happened, just scenarios in your head. Nobody wants to fail. It is not a good feeling to put your all into something and it just doesn’t work out. Unfortunately, in life you will fail. There is a peace in accepting that. The only way you that your failures can define you is if you allow them to make you quit. You must change your perception. Take failure as an opportunity to learn and to get better. When something doesn’t work out, it is time to self-assess and see what needs to be done differently to get the outcome that you desire. You can choose to make the necessary changes to get a different result or you can continue to do the same thing and continue to fail. But it all comes down to you making a choice. Learn and grow. Become better. That’s what happened to me recently. I failed, and it was one of the best things to happen to me.
I was in the gym doing deadlifts (without question my favorite exercise). I’m going through my progressions wanting to do my max. I load up the bar and made sure everything was set. I tightened my belt and went to put chalk in my hands. Most of the time, when I get my feet set, I grab the bar and just go for it. This time, I just stood there thinking about it. I began to question myself. After about a minute I reached down to grab the bar, wrapped my hands around it, and immediately let go. I took a few steps back. I approached the bar again, got me feet set, and went for it. I pulled the bar maybe six inches off the ground before I let it go. I failed. Now I was at an intersection. I thought about just quitting and moving on to the rest of my workout. Once you’ve attempted a max lift, it is very difficult to find the energy to do it again. I was then reminded that the body is weak but the mind is strong. I made the decision to attempt it again. I took a few deep breaths as I walked up to the chalk bowl. I thought about what I did and what changes needed to be made for a successful lift. I decided not to overthink it. When I step up to the platform this time, I was just going to go for it. I tightened my belt, stepped to the bar on the platform, took a deep breath, and just went for it. I made those slight changes (including driving through my feet) and was able to stand all the way up with it. Failing my first attempt revealed to me my mistakes and I was now able to be successful because of what I learned.
Again, you will fail at a lot of things in life. Just don’t allow that to make you quit. Learn from it and turn things around in your favor. Look at it this way, most of the successful people you’ve heard of have failed numerous times before they got it right. The important thing to remember is to never give up. You can fall short of something nine times. But when you finally reach it on that tenth try, the joy of success immediately overrides everything you had to go through to get to that moment. It’s worth it. Persevere and make it happen!
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