How to Fail Without Giving Up

-By Jaime Willis

"Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain."  ~Author Unknown

I've been working towards a big fitness challenge this year - running fifty 10 kilometer 'races.' On Monday, I ran my 15th 10k.  I ran literally the worst time I've ever run on Monday - 81:36.  That is over 13 minutes per mile, when I have run under 9 minutes per mile in my best time ever. 

Negativity is not my thing, but this is not so much negative as it is reality.  Monday, I really sucked at running.  Period. Because I'm a competitive person, being bad at something is really tough.  Because I'm an optimistic person, getting defeated is difficult.  

Achieving your goals means that you have to learn to accept a lot of failure and a lot of defeat without giving up.

The difference is that you can't let your failures and defeat and your EGO stop you from continuing to try, from continuing to reach your goals.  Yea, I said ego.  It is definitely a blow to your ego to realize that you aren't immediately awesome at something you want to do.  You have to admit to yourself that there is something you want that is going to take a lot of hard work to get accomplished.  

Here's the thing - you have to suck first before you get to be good at something.  There is no cheat code in life.  There is no movie montage through the difficult training that happens first.  You literally have to slog through each and every day of being bad at something in order to get better at it. 

Take Derek Sivers.  Derek wanted to be a singer.  Derek couldn't sing.  He took voice lessons, he starting touring with a band, he practiced, he mentored with an Indian vocalist, he recorded albums.  Over the course of FIFTEEN years, Derek learned how to sing.  That is 5,478 days of working at his goal, many  which Derek was told that he wasn't a singer and should just give up.  He didn't give up, he became a singer.  

When I started to get healthy in 2005, I couldn't have walked 6.2 miles in a row - I wouldn't walk across the room if I could help it.  Six years later, I am running 6.2 miles regularly.  But I'm  not a good runner.  I'm not fast, I have horrible form, and I am still overweight, which doesn't help the impact running has on my joints.  But I am better than I was six years ago.   

Even though my Monday time was horrible, I still finished the entire race.  I didn't quit. I didn't give up.  In fact, I got home from the worst run ever and signed up to run a road race this Sunday.  Because I won't get better at running by quitting, I'll get better at running by running.  In another 9 years, check in with me and see how far I've come.  I bet I'll be pretty good at running by then. 

You can choose to let your failures deter you or you can use your failures as stepping stones on your path to success.  The choice is yours.