THE BENCH: FAILURE

FAILURE, why are so many people scared of this word? Why do so many avoid the possible outcome this has? This is a MINDSET. Very early in my career, someone that was a great mentor to me and sat me down at what I thought was a massive potential failure on my part.

Here is the story. I was 40. I was not happy in the role I had, and it was a massive role, but the politics, the all consuming time 80 to 90 hours per week, and just the poor environment was making it almost a nightmare. BUT, the person I am says no matter what you can do anything, so I just could not stop myself without feeling I was failing.

I recall sitting at a BIG BOY, ( remember those) and him saying, how old are you, write it down. When did you graduate from college , write it down. How long do you think you will work before you retire( just guess for the fun of it? 62, 65?)

So here is the math. 40 , graduated at 23. So worked 17 years so far at that point. I said 65. so that means I had plans to keep working at my career for another 25 years. He said so know what this is? you have ONLY invested 40% of your career beginning to learn what skills you need in your career. Fail as many times as you can to learn from that so in the final 20% of your career you can use that learning to be wildly successful and to use that to help others get better, bet better and faster. EMBRACE FAILURE. Every time you get that knot in your stomach of a potential failure, stop, think about what would happen if you did fail? Would you die? would someone you love die? If you lost a job because of it could you never work again? Learn to allow the wave of internal fear to flow over you, see what the might happen would be , live in it, learn from it and move on. It is never as bad as you make it and it is often good from the learning you get from it.

THE BENCH is a symbol of the days where I missed a bench press, or I sat and replayed the day and the frustrations of those failures, but put myself back on the bench and fought through it and got to the other side. FAILURE is not what you make it unless you see this as a personal flaw, see it as a true opportunity to ask what did I LEARN from what happened, how can I use this learning to be better next time and how can I use this to help others perhaps avoid this same failure in the future. FAILURE is the greatest teacher. WHAT YOU DO WITH IT IS THE KEY. HAVE A GREAT UPLIFTING WEEK!