A Saturday thought on failure…
I’m not kidding in the title. You should be looking for areas to fail in. You can’t succeed without it. If you’re not accustomed to pushing yourself to the limit, you’ll never reach a goal that exists at the limit.
You should put yourself in situations that significantly challenge your ability to persevere as often as possible (without being reckless). Be used to being in this situation. The most successful people are consistently diving in to difficult situations and using the experience to push them to the next level.
It might mean you have to push yourself to the physical limit while running a marathon. It might mean having to cram 14 hours per day of studying to learn a new technology. In the end, the push to overcome potential failure makes you stronger. And in the beginning, you’ve calculated some risk and chosen a course of action to succeed.
Partners, friends, co-workers, and bosses who push your limits are the best kind. They keep you going and stretch your abilities. You’re on the right track with these folks. These people are the ones who will mercilessly help you reinvent yourself and bring you a better career and appreciation for life.
Get out there and find things you could fail at, calculate the risk, and choose the course of action that overcomes.
I agree; there is great satisfaction in pursuing areas of “failure” and overcoming it! At the end of the summer I'll be taking rock climbing lessons; I'm hoping to overcome my moderate fear of heights :).
Quite a timely post as I sit here failing miserably at administrating my wireless router. I'm getting a bit closer, though, and it's exactly as you mentioned. Sure I've lost a couple hours of a Saturday that I'd probably like back to do other things, but I'm learning through the process. Somewhere deep down I have this naive hope that this failure will lead to success, and I'll once again have my iMac and MacBook Pro playing nice on my home network. We'll see how it goes.
Right on! Can't wait to hear about how those lessons go. Drop a note with pics or if you need pointers.
Cheers!
It almost always does. And If you fail, it's ok… Be proud for taking something on that stretched your abilities and put you in a challenging spot.
IS that the place off delaware ave.? Thought about climbing a few times. This entry motivates me to go.
PS Your Tiesto twitter comment got me. Adiago for strings gets me going.
That's the one. It's a great climbing gym. Cool people and good
facility.
Tiesto is just awesome. Would love to see him live in Holland.
IS that the place off delaware ave.? Thought about climbing a few times. This entry motivates me to go.
PS Your Tiesto twitter comment got me. Adiago for strings gets me going.
That's the one. It's a great climbing gym. Cool people and good
facility.
Tiesto is just awesome. Would love to see him live in Holland.