Failure or Success-Celebrate Them Both!
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. ~ Michael Jordan
I love performing and I remember a talent show that I helped organize on base. I was going to do one number that should have been fairly simple – two guitarists and I would sing Country Roads by John Denver. However, i had only performed with one of the guitar players one time, and he was on leave the two weeks prior to the show returning that day. I knew nothing about playing a guitar and little more about singing with one (big difference between that and a piano). So we were finally together a few minutes before we went on stage and I will never forget that performance. The two guitars were in slightly different keys and I was trying to sing – probably somewhere in the middle. I remember coming off stage totally mortified and swearing that I would never perform again. But, I had grown up singing so NOT doing it wasn’t really in my nature.
Two weeks later I went to the PX and bought a guitar so that I could learn to hear specific notes verses all the harmonics. Today I don’t play but I’m comfortable singing with them 🙂
In the world of Sweet Adelines International, the coveted title of International Quartet Champion is filled with stories of the struggles, trials and triumphs. These stories are from members and include one that I recall where they came from a last place finish at a regional contest to eventually achieve the title of Queen of Harmony. They persevered and perfected their craft to achieve success.
Is there something in your life that you LOVE doing? Something that, if money were no object, you could see yourself doing for the rest of your life? Then stop looking at the obstacles as reasons to quit and look at them as opportunities to succeed on a more powerful level!
Every one of us has had some challenge that, if we let it, would keep us from embracing our gifts. We just need to find the courage, the strength to learn from the ‘failures’.
Culturally we need to get excited about failure. We would all benefit from looking at them as fantastic opportunities to grow.
Only then will we be free to be open to the possibilities and drink in all that life has to offer us.
Or, as Lewis learns in Disney’s Meet the Robinsons