Fail Your Way to Finding Success

I want to speak about failure. I think failure is one of those horrific words that’s been attached to times when you’re not succeeding. Someone I admired a lot when I was growing up is Michael Jordan and I think he said it best when he said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Now, you know we often think failure is this horrible thing. We try something; we don’t get the guy that we want, we don’t get the girl that we want, we don’t get the job that we want; we don’t do as well in our exercise program; we end up in recovery.. Whatever it is. You have a relationship problem. You have a drug problem. We all fail at something! I think that, as I have learned, we can change the way we look at things and view failure as an opportunity to change things. Improve. Do better. And grow. If a wide receiver misses a catch in a football game, he watches the film to watch how he can do better next time. If someone doesn’t get the job they want, they reassess their resume, make improvements, view the interview as a learning opportunity, and do better the next time around. If someone doesn’t get the guy or girl they want, they look at what went wrong, how they responded in certain situations, and learn how they can do better in the next relationship. I think we need to change the way we think. Failure is a great thing. If we never failed, we never tried anything. We have to try, to fail, and we have to fail to improve and get better. So focus on failure as a way to grow and improve, and become a better version of yourself. Embrace failure and learn from your failures, and learn how to use it to improve yourself and get better everyday.