Success
“I
have been broken and have failed so many times that my sense of
identity has sprouted and peeled like an onion. But because of this,
I have lived more than my share of lives and feel both young and old
at once, with a sudden heart that cries out just to meet the air.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening)
Many
of us spend our lives in search of perfection; the perfect job, the
perfect mate, the perfect look. We may be so focused on perfection
that we walk right past many opportunities and gifts that have been
handed to us simply because they don't meet our rigorous standards of
excellence.
There's
nothing like a good failure to push us past our illusions of
grandeur. Failure, albeit painful, is a good thing. It jumps us over
the hurdle of thinking we're special and better than we have a right
to be, and plops us squarely into the same soup as the rest of
humanity. And if we're lucky, it motivates us to focus on the
near-ground and not the far ideal. One step at a time, one layer at a
time, we can then deal in reality with all it's beauty and
imperfection.
Most
of us fail more than we succeed; especially when we have the bar set
on the top rung. If our goal is always to be 'the best', then we will
continue to be disappointed in any performance that is not up to that
'very special' snuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that we
give up trying. I don't think shooting for the ground is a worthy
endeavor. But if we can take incremental steps, and be happy with small successes, we have a much better chance of reaching our
eventual goal. Think of a football team that, instead of throwing the
ball fifty yards down field on the fragile hope that the runner is in
the right place at the right time, you move the ball three yards at a
time. Same game, less risk, more likelihood of success.
I
think that if you asked most power players, like Bill Gates or
President Obama, they would tell you, “Don't be afraid to fail.”
You will learn far more from your failures, wrong turns, and near
misses, than you will from your grand successes. Don't be afraid to fail, but don't give up trying to succeed.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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