It’s Not Failure. It’s PRACTICE!

I belong to a fitness Facebook group. The other day someone wrote about his mindset regarding failure. He decided to regard failure not as a loss or as something negative, but as practice and a learning experience. Didn’t quite hit the mark on a deadlift? Practice–maybe there’s something off with your technique. Gave into temptation and had the donuts in the office break room? Practice–now you know to bring a healthy snack to fight the mid-morning munchies.

Last night in taekwondo class our instructor was encouraging us to try out something, even if we were afraid of failing. His example was 360 roundhouse, or tornado kick. It’s a complicated kick that can be tricky for anyone, including me and my fellow black belts and the lone blue belt in our class. Our instructor said if we’re afraid of failing and don’t try something, then we’ll never get better. Learning can happen incrementally each time you try something.

My 360 roundhouse kick isn’t great, at least where I think it should be for a fairly athletic 2nd degree black belt. So that means I practice. I’m not “failing” when I miss the pad I’m trying to kick or don’t get as much height as I want–I’m practicing. I tried out a tip he’d given for timing the jumping part of the kick, which pushed me beyond my comfort zone with that technique, and what do you know, it was better than the first time I did it.

By continuing to practice (even when that means messing up) we continue to learn, and when we continue to learn we begin to improve.

The fear of failure is often more painful than experiencing the failure itself. What if we regarded every “failure” instead as practice for getting better? Perhaps by regarding everything we do as practice and learning, we can make the world around us a little less scary and a little more exciting.