Failure

I woke up this morning in the middle of a dream in which I was back at university. For some reason, one of my physio lecturers (just to give fellow UUJ physios a laugh - it was Mark Poulter) was conducting a French oral exam. I thought I'd done ok in it. I got 27%. I was pretty upset, looking for someone to blame. I was yelling at the lecturer, claiming injustice, unfairness, bias. I was ashamed. Everyone in the class knew I'd got 27% and they were all tiptoeing around me, looking at me with a mixture of shame and pity. 
Wow, my subconscious has some issues!

After writing about success last week and touching on failure, I'd been thinking about going into it more this week. The dream, the feeling like a failure when I woke up, made it even more clear.

I grew up terrified of failure. I was a geek at school, and I worked hard. With every assignment or project or exam at school, if I was not in the top five of the class, I considered that a failure. As I got a bit older, I think that attitude became a bit more destructive, because if I knew I wasn't going to be the best at something, or at least close to the best, I just wouldn't try. I started a lot of things - piano, violin, tennis, guitar, hockey. I gave all of them up at points, as soon as they got a bit difficult, as soon as I didn't meet up to standards.

Who hasn't felt like a failure at least once in their life? In work, in cooking (I've had some shockers) in sport, in relationships, in friendships, in morals, in attitudes...If you haven't, well, actually, I don't believe you!

We need to make the distinction between setback and failure, because so often, incredibly often, life deals us blows that knock us ten steps back when we have just fought to take two steps forward. You work your butt off to show your boss that you are worthy of promotion, only to see your lazy co-worker get that step up. You get up to train at 5 a.m. every morning and get injured the game before the squad is announced. You put aside your insecurities and carefully, wisely invest yourself into a relationship, only to be led on and hurt deeply.

These things are difficult to come back from. 

They are like a slap in the face that knocks you off your feet and makes you want to cower in the corner, nursing your wounds. The last thing you want to do is get up and try again. But you know what? 

Being knocked down is not failure. 

Failure is when you don’t get up and try again. Failure is not trying.

Sure, there are a lot of things to stop us from trying again. How about fear? Fear of a setback. Fear that when you get up and try again, you’re just going to get knocked down again. When you really want something, when you’re really invested in it, it’s so easy to think that not achieving that thing is the end of the world and the end of all hope. Boris Becker’s response to his 1987 Wimbledon upset loss to unknown Peter Doohan was one that more sportspeople maybe need to listen to: “I didn’t start a war. Nobody died. I just lost a tennis match”. I’m not belittling your problems, not saying that they are not important and don’t hurt. I’m just saying that to not try is a bigger tragedy than to be knocked down.

I'm not the first to say this, and definitely not the most eloquent, but I really believe that the only failure in life happens when you no longer try. Henry Ford, the guy who made the cars, went broke 5 times before he successfully started his company and became one of the richest men in the world at the time, said "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently". 

So do it...
                 begin again...
                                   pick up the pieces...
                                                                 stand up one more time...
                                                                                                     keep on going.