Failure is...

By now most of us have statistically given up on any new year’s resolutions that we might have had. In fact, if you do a quick google search, you find that the most common dates people abandon their goals are between January 12th and 16th. It has been said that momentum is easy to get yet hard to keep, and perhaps you fall into the 12-16 category of people who typically abandon their goals.

Having spent a lot of time working with client’s who suffer from addiction(s) I can tell you that the first thirty days are the hardest and the second and third weeks in are the hardest ones to fight through. One topic I speak with my addiction client’s early on about is the very real fact of relapse. My purpose in this is not to discourage them, but to allow them to face the reality of the hard road ahead and normalize the 50-ton elephant that is relapse.

I say “Normalize” because if you’ve spent any time in our school system at all, you know that we are not and have not been programmed to handle failure appropriately. No, I’m not saying that schools should stop giving out grades, but rather, we should teach people how to handle failure and not be handled by it. Also, I am not advocating for failure or relapse, my goal is to help us all (and my clients) come to an understanding that no failure, regardless of how cataclysmic it might seem, no failure, no relapse is the ultimate end; only death retains that moniker.

I know it’s cliché to say, but I believe it: “The only true failure is giving up.” Failure, if we allow it, can teach us so much more than we think. My martial arts teacher used to say, “If you pay attention, your opponent will show you where he wants to be hit.” All failure really does is show us where the chinks in our armor lie, and with that, we can either give up, or improve.

So, where on this little journey to a “New you” are you? Is life beating you down and showing you where and how you can improve? If so, take a moment to think of what you’ve learned? Why are you in the position you’re in and what can be done about it? If you feel like you have failed at your resolutions, your job, your life, anything, let me encourage you to take today as your reset button; don’t allow yourself to be ruled by failure of any kind, learn from it, grow, and rise to the occasion, and remember, the only true failure is giving up.

#2018 #goals #failure #try #quit