Attempting to succeed means you will fail sometimes

March 10, 2012 by Joshua
in Blog, Leadership

The only way never to fail is never to try. If you try enough times, eventually you will fail.

People who try hard enough to improve their lives learn to regard failing first as inevitable, then as desirable, if not in a particular instance, then in general. If they don’t fail sometimes they aren’t trying hard enough.

This inevitability occurred to me recently when watching some sports championship. The best players, no matter how good, don’t win every championship. Not only do they lose, but they lose big. They get the biggest spotlight as leading a team to lose. They lose games and seasons, but they don’t give up.

Muhammad Ali lost by unanimous decision. Michael Jordan lost big games. Everybody lost big games.

How you get back into competition is one of the major challenges for succeeding, because you can’t succeed without failing along the way. To losers and victims that sentence probably sounds like reason not to try. To winners it sounds like a recipe for learning about yourself and life.

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