Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Failure is good for you! Really....

I don't know if you have noticed in recent years that our culture avoids failure. My oldest son played youth baseball this summer. They didn't keep track of the score in their baseball games. So me being the person I am asked why? The answer....... they didn't want to discourage the kids if the lost. Really? So we want them to grow up to think that they can always win? We want  them to think they should be successful at everything? That is crazy! This wont build character! Failure builds endurance, perseverance and persistence. We have all heard the examples of people like Thomas Edison. Someone once asked Edison about the 1,000 patents he had on failed light bulbs and if it discouraged him? His reply, was that he had learned a thousand ways not to build a light bulb! Now that is a totally different way of looking at failure! 
How about Micheal Jordan? Now I wont lie I am a huge Jordan fan! No pun intended! Jordan was cut his freshman year from the basketball team. Instead of letting that failure get him down and discourage him, he let it fuel him and drive him to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Even after being in the NBA failure drove him to be better and never let losing or failing bother him. Here is a great Nike commercial that shows it....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc. He always let those faults and failure drive him to better his game and himself.

The point for us? Do not let failure hold you back! We have to change our mental prospect or view on failure. We need understand that we cannot win every baseball game. So times our business' will fail, our friendships will fail. Even our diets will fail! But that is not an excuse to just give up. It should be what drives us to become better. We can, like many in society, let failure destroy our lives or we can let it fuel us to the top. If you grew up in the 90's you will understand this, " I wanna be like Mike"! Light a fire inside and go after it! Don't let a fear of failure control you, hold you back anymore. Be relentless!



 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4 : 13

1 comment:

  1. I share similar views of failure to my clients. Failures are part of the overall life experience which gives us insight into what we need to work on and what we could do to better ourselves.

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