Celebrating Failure

My brother and his family are currently vacationing in Anna Maria Island for a couple of weeks. Being just a 30 minute drive for us, we had the pleasure of spending all day Saturday and Sunday with them enjoying the sun, gulf waters, and family. We decided to give stand up paddle boarding a whirl and rented a couple of boards and headed out to the gulf. My teenage sons and nieces were up in no time, paddling around and navigating the small waves coming in on the beach. They looked like naturals and so of course I thought how hard could it be? One attempt to stand up on a piece of wood floating on the water soon gave me my answer. Epic Fail! I consider myself to be a fairly coordinated person, but continued attempts to stand up resulted in continued crashes and splashes back into the water. This was a source of extreme pleasure to my family, particularly the teenagers who performed this simple task with ease. After taking a pretty lengthy break and giving others an opportunity to try their luck, I gave it another shot. I won’t be winning any paddle board prizes but after a few more tries, I was eventually able to get up on my feet and paddle around in the gulf. It was worth the effort.

I look at failure in general as a bump in the road to success. Failure to me isn’t absolute or the end all in any situation. I would be foolish to believe I can do anything anytime I choose, or that I will make the perfect decision the first time. What I do put a lot of credence into is learning from past attempts or experiences. I have made a lot of bad decisions in my life, but I don’t consider myself a failure by any means. I do not possess the skill to do all things, but again I am not a failure. If there is something I want to do I must learn how to do it and practice what I have learned. The framework of this class is a perfect illustration. My first elevator pitch got some pretty bad feedback, but my third pitch was greeted with positive enthusiasm. Three legitimate tries at anything should show some improvement, imagine what a hundred tries would look like. Keep your head up and stay confident!