Thursday August 26, 2010

FAILURE. A word that brings all kinds of emotions to most of us. I have written often about my fear of failure, mostly in the real world, not the fitness realm. For some, failure is a word that is NOT BAD. It spurs them on to try again, do more, challenge themselves more, learn a lesson. It actually is not failure but a learning lesson.

For others, failure is a bad word... one that leaves a person down & depressed & not wanting to try again. I think for many, this is the case.

I actually have a post coming up Monday about the power of words & what one person did to blast thru the words we play over & over in our heads. How we can start thinking in terms that help us vs. harm us.

My dear friend Dr. J has his perspective on the value of failure & lessons he learned along the way. Maybe this is the way that will help you. There are so many different paths we can take to reach our goals. Take a read on Dr. J's version of the word failure. Don't forget, Dr. J is up & running at CalorieLab again & it is fast now!!!

The Value of Failure

We live in unusual times! Who would have thought as children, or adults for that matter, that being “The Biggest Loser” would be a good thing?

Actually losing, or failure, can be a good thing, and plays an important role in our having successful lives.

The benefits of failure

Failure can motivate us to a greater success! Failure can be a learning experience from which we can grow and achieve new things through our new education. Failure can be looked at as a part of the process of our growth, not a dead end to our path. Perhaps just a speed bump on our personal highway, not a solid barrier that stops our progress like a brick wall.


As children, failure was merely part of the process of learning. Oh, the tediousness of those piano lessons! Always hitting the wrong key, just when you thought you would make it of the end of the piece! Or you could change to playing the guitar like I did, and go back and learn piano later when your self-motivation was stronger and did not rely on being forced to practice by someone else! There is no failure, really, only lessons to be learned.

Never confuse failing with being a failure! Tom Robbins, the author, has some thoughts about failure:

So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as
insufferable as a mediocre success.

He also says, “Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.”

Even J.K. Rowling has failed.

In her commencement address to the graduating class at Harvard University this year, J.K. Rowling, discussed her views of failure. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized.

Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

A little failure is good for you In my senior year of medical school I failed my Emergency Room rotation! I told my brother of my shameful defeat, and he asked, “You never failed anything in school before, did you?”

“No!” I replied.

“It was probably good for you,” he said.

As it turned out, it was! I was failed because I had walked out on what I considered at the time to be an abusive instructor. I already had a doctoral degree before staring med school, so I was not your typical student who would do whatever the teacher said.

I apologized to the head of the ER, as “It’s easier to be forgiven than get permission,” has long been a favorite saying of mine, but he wisely told me that I needed to redo the rotation. He did go on to say that I would be assigned to the ER when he was there, and that he understood my being a little older than the typical student, as was also his case in school, and that he would get me through it! Since I was doing it twice, I got to know all the personnel much better, was assigned the advanced cases, and in the end, ER was one of my favorite rotations. I learned much more by doing it again!

I remember reading about a very famous failure. This man had a musical career that failed! He had an acting career that failed! He had marriages to several of the most beautiful women of his time, and all of his marriages failed! When asked about his life of failures, he replied. “I may have had a lot of failures, but I had more fun with my failures than most people have with their successes!”

So, what is failure really? Is it what you make of it or how you define it or how you may choose to rename it? Anyone want to share some personal stories??? What is failure to you or is failure not part of your vocabulary?

If you care to check out another read on the failure word, check out Roy's post, Failure is an Option.