Persist Through Failure

It’s getting close to the end of the year, that wonderful, happy time to reflect on all the great accomplishments you've made over the last year and celebrate with your friends and family. That's great and congratulations to all that have succeeded this year! But what about those who didn't accomplish what they wanted to this year and failed to reach their goals?

Yikes.  Failure.

I don’t even like to think about the word. Especially when it comes to people looking to shed some pounds.  What kills a diet more quickly than a single slip up?

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

- Bill Cosby

If you want to commit to getting in shape, then you need to be able to persist through failure.  Everyone who has accomplished something of note has struggled with failure at one or more points in their ascent.  The difference is they persisted through it and learned a lesson.

“I haven’t failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”

- Thomas Edison

The difference is people who have achieved success have persisted through it and learned a lesson. Those are the two keys in dealing with failure.  You must persist and learn.

If you slip on your diet, or miss a day of exercise, don’t fret about it.  Don’t let it derail you.  Push it from your mind.  Focus on all your positive days, not the one slip up.  Picture yourself at your goal weight, not in the act of devouring that doughnut you shouldn't have.  Treat it as a lesson and move on.  This is how you persist, if you fail for a moment it is OK, just don’t let that moment stretch into a day then a week and then a month.

You have to accept failures as natural life lessons and develop a tougher skin to deal with them.

“Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.”

- Robert H. Schuller

The second step is to learn from your mistakes.  Quite often learning from your mistakes will be more efficient than than learning from your successes. When you fail, treat it as a lesson learned.  It is just like in business, when you fail at something, you learn the things that don’t work. This is the same with getting in shape.  If you realize that every Friday you miss out on exercise because of a late work meeting then reschedule your workout.

Facing failure is natural part of life, along with death and taxes.  You can’t avoid it, and even if you could you wouldn't want to.  Your life’s lessons are learned through your failures along with your successes.  Don’t fear failure, persist through and learn from it.

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

- Johnny Cash