I was listening to an ultramarathon documentary on YouTube the other day during my workout.
One of the people being interviewed said something pretty cool. He was recalling how in one of his previous attempts at 100 miles, he didn’t finish. He went on to say, “if there’s no chance at failure, what’s the point of doing it?”
I thought that was pretty profound and I couldn’t stop thinking about that one line.
Too many people let the fear of failure hold them back from even trying.
They don’t join a gym because they are worried about not being able to do something.
They don’t make another attempt at improving their health because they failed the last 10 times with various diets.
What people don’t realize is that even the best people fail. In addition, no one is proud of something that was super easy. Consider this: no one writes about climbing Mount Everest because it was a bunny slope.
Another example a little closer to home comes right from our most recent Strongman Competition. Three of the four women in our Lightweight division could not do the log press. That didn’t stop them from signing up and doing their best to work towards that goal. Two of the women competing failed our truck pull last time, but went on to do it this time.
Ask any of them, and despite their failures, they had a wonderful time and are super proud of themselves for the ways in which they challenged themselves that day.
Pursuing a challenging goal only made them better whereas avoiding it, they may not have pushed themselves the way they did in training.
Failure itself isn’t the issue, it’s how you process it and frame it in your mind.
So what if you set out to lose 15 pounds and “only” lost 5. It doesn’t mean you were a failure. Take what you learned from losing those 5 pounds and repeat that process (as long as you did it in a healthy and sustainable way).
So what if you trained to be able to perform a certain lift and you were ultimately unable to do it. You still got stronger in the process.
Pursuing something great and then falling short in the process puts you WAY further ahead compared to someone who never even tries.
In summary, it’s not the actual failure that holds us back, it’s our fear of it and how we process it.
My encouragement for you: challenge yourself to something where you know the outcome is not guaranteed.
Challenge yourself to something that gets you out of your comfort zone because that is where the real growth happens.
You can do it. I believe in you.
Your friend in wellness and fitness,
Coach Candice