Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Embrace Failure



One thing that I’ve been trying to push for is to have more meaningful conversations with the people that I surround myself with. Sure, we can talk about the normal, more light-hearted things in life: movies, Game of Thrones, the dynasty that is Alabama football, but I want to know more about the goals and ambitions that people have, as I’m on this mission to fine tune those things myself.

Along those lines, I had a good conversation the other day and the topic of complacency came up. I’ve always put complacency up there as one of my bigger fears in life. The reason being is that it’s not always obvious: it may try to disguise itself as stability or things being as good as they can be, but it’s neither of these things. It’s not growth, and if you’re not growing, then what are you doing? And it’s even more dangerous because it can seep into any aspect of your life.

As a result of this conversation, I started thinking and I came up with the perfect combatant to complacency: embracing failure. It seems simple enough, and it’s entirely possible that I’m just not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it was a lightbulb moment for me.

To some degree, my personal philosophy has always been to do things and see what happens. When people tell me stories about things they’ve tried I don’t care if they failed, I’m impressed that made an attempt. It’s so easy to talk ourselves out of things and over analyze situations, but everything isn't meant to go under the microscope; we just have to trust our instincts sometimes.

And, because it’s easy enough for me to type this and not follow my own advice, I’m vowing to personally embrace failure in all aspects of my life going forward. I encourage you all to join me on this mission.  I’m sure you've been over your New Year’s resolutions for some time now, so you need something to fill that void anyway. If this doesn't improve your life, then your next drink (of water or something else free) is on me.

Cheers to failure!

-JIP