Fortune Cookie Friday: Failure

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Greetings and Happy Friday to you all! Guess what today is? It’s the one-year anniversary of when I first started posting Fortune Cookie Friday posts! Here’s a flashback fortune cookie for you to savor.

So how’s your week been going? I’m not going to lie: I’ve had a week. You could classify it as one of THOSE weeks. You know how things tend to happen in threes? Boy, did they ever! Between burst pipes and broken appliances and unexpected car work, my attention was taken up by other things this week, so I apologize for the lateness of this post. That said, I’m giving myself some slack about it, because it’s all going to be okay, and you’ll see why, below.

Without further adieu, let’s get right to today’s fortune!

“You’re never a loser until you quit trying.”

One of the things that I think makes humans cool is our ability to adapt in a variety of settings!

This fortune cookie may be worded a little harshly, but I think it’s true. No matter how hard you have to work, or how many steps you have to take, or how many attempts you have to make:

KEEP TRYING. Don’t give up! Failure isn’t the end of the world, and it’s not something you should judge yourself on, either. If anything, it should goad you to learn and do more.

As humans, we are uniquely situated to always be learning, either from our own mistakes or from others. We flex. We adapt. We look at things in new ways. We change the rules.

We innovate. 

But we’re not perfect, and we’re not going to hit it out of the park right on the first try every time we try something, right?

So please, if you take only one thing away from today’s fortune, let it be this: if you’ve ever failed miserably at something...you are not alone, and YOU ARE NOT A LOSER.

Take these really basic examples:

Did you learn how to ride a bike? I bet you fell off that bike a few times in the process, right? (Yup, I sure did! Got pretty good at riding it, eventually.)

Did you learn how to ice skate? I bet you fell on your butt the first time you hit the ice, probably multiple times! (I totally did! I eventually became a figure skater.)

Or do you currently drive a car? It's something you don't even think about when you do it every day, but did you scare the you-know-what out of the person who was teaching you how to drive back when you had your learner’s permit? (Ask my dad how teaching me to parallel park went the first few times! AND I failed my driver’s test the first time I took it! But now I’m a really good driver.) (No, really, I am! *g*)

The point is: we all make mistakes. Failure isn’t a thing by which we should judge ourselves. It’s a crappy metric. We are geared to learn from our mistakes. We adjust, iterate, or tackle the problem from another angle, either until we succeed or we decide to change the game altogether.

Failure isn’t a measure of success. I mean, do you know how many successful people out there failed at first? If you don’t believe me, check out this article by Business Insider about 29 people who failed in one way or another, yet still succeeded.

You’re not alone.

So how about trying this: stop judging yourself so harshly. Know that as long as you keep trying in life, you’re doing good. When you fail at something, don’t treat yourself like it’s the worst thing ever. Just keep trying.

I’ll give it a shot, too.

Let's pinky swear: “I do solemnly swear not to freak out when I fail. I will not measure myself by my failures."

Cool?

Cool.

Oh, and one more thing:

[Base photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash]

xo,

🐝

Have a great week! 

 ~positively b.e.e. is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Follow me there!~