Hello Fellow Warriors!
Hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was great and full of family, food and well deserved naps.
Little late getting the blog up, but…uh…well…stuff?
Ok. What can I say. Got a little lax with the holidays.
Which, brings me to what I want to talk about in this weeks blog
Failure.
Man, no one wants to have that word associated with them! It brings up a lot of feelings of shame. And the feelings that are generally associated with failure are:
Not being good enough
Not being smart enough
Not being fast enough
or whatever area we’re in that we just don’t quite measure up.
But you know there is good news with any type of failure. We can use it to make ourselves bitter or we can use to make ourselves better.
We can use that moment of failure to sit in our shame and look at all the things that we didn’t do right and beat ourselves up about it.
OR we can use that failure to adjust in the areas we didn’t quite make the mark, and do better next time. In this case, it’s no longer a failure, but a lesson learned.
When we fail, it just shows we are trying something that’s out of our comfort zone and that’s a good thing! It takes a lot of bravery. In most things in life that have value we will not succeed at the first attempt.
Thomas Edison tried over 10,000 times to invent the lightbulb. It only took him one success to be successful. He is credited with saying “ I have not failed , I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work”
When we fail at something, the good news is that we can choose. We can choose to be defeated or to get back up and try again. I have learned many things in life. The greatest teachers in my life were my failures. They taught me my limits and where I needed to improve, and that’s what we have to do as students in martial arts and in life.
So when you try a new kata, a new kick, or a new judo throw and you don’t get it right the first time – be encouraged that you have found a way that doesn’t work for you and keep going.
A great wartime General Douglas MacArthur is known for a saying
“ I don’t judge a person by how far they fall. I judge them by how far they bounce back up”
The Bible offers encouragement as well:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,”
Colossians 3:23 NIV
So take your wins and your losses and use them to propel yourself to the next level. It’s ok to mess up. Mistakes are how we learn. As long as you never give up you never truly fail.
Love you guys
Stay strong
Stay dedicated
Stay motivated
And above all, be that Warrior of God, I know you are