Failing Forward

Recently, I got talking with someone who was a great wrestler in high school, I was not a a good wrestler or even a decent one. I was actually quite horrible. He was recounting all of his crazy takedowns and escapes and how he basically demolished most of his competition. I was internally laughing because I was a horrible wrestler, I would routinely get clobered by kids younger and lighter than me. But honestly, I gave my all to wrestling. It might have been the first time in my life that I really learned how to give myself fully to something, even if I was the best, or even average at it. I remember running suicides and doing countless laps, and really wanting to be the best that I could, and for the first time really starting to understand what work ethic really meant. What’s great about it was I learned life skills while doing something that was good for me. It’s what Randy Pausch calls the head fake, you do one thing, but your really doing it to show something else. I learned (and I didn’t even know I was learning it) that you have to go hard after anything that is worth having-even if the odds aren’t in your favor. If you give a ginuwine effort, you will either learn that it wasn’t where you could best be utilized, or you might find your calling and God-given giftedness. Seth Godin has a great book called “The Dip” and he teaches that we quit things all the time, that why we all aren’t basketball players or ballerinas. But what Godin talks about is whenever you start something new, there is always some sort of incline and some excitement. Then eventually it starts to round off and eventually starts to fall and things become difficult. There are problems and stresses and really difficult new skills to learn that really stretch you in ways you hadn’t expected. That’s called “The Dip”. Now, the worst place to quit is the dip because you’ve already invested all of that time and energy, but it’s also really difficult to keep moving forward, which creates this very difficult catch-22. Whenever though, you feel like you are putting more effort in than you are getting back, or you feel like the opportunity for getting more back is lessening, that to me is a good time to bail and to do something different. I have always thought of this as failing forward. Sure, you when you were trying out for the high school swim team you didn’t know you weren’t going to be Michael Phelps, but if you gave it everything I’m sure that you learned something about yourself that would help you down the road. My dad one time told me that I went hard at anything that I did. I didn’t even realize that about myself, but I had been taught to do that by my experiences and the people around me. I can still remember where I was when be told me that, and from then on, I knew I would do my absolute best at anything I tried. So cut to now and being a broke Brooklynite trying to make it happen and find someone to love in the process. You know, I wouldn’t really change much at all because I believe that God has me on a path for a reason. And my goal is to find that reason and accomplish it. Fully. And fail forward when I screw up.