Failure Isn’t Everything
by Coach Brandon
In the above picture, I can clearly remember feeling defeated and like I had completely failed. Obviously, emotion in the moment is driving that feeling to be so prominent, and I’ve seen it many times before. The problem is most people associate failure with complete defeat.
Being able to then process and take an outside look we can always see a silver lining in our perceived failures. We begin to see failure as an opportunity to create and look back at what went right and wrong to connect the dots and develop new learnings, understandings and perspectives of why things didn’t go to plan.
My top 5 things I’ve learnt from failing on and off the platform
1 – You are forced to revise your approach
If you didn’t get the result on the platform (or in whatever endeavour) you now have the opportunity to sit down and reflect on your prep/program and clearly identify what happened to not get the result.
2 – Seek out inspiration/information through new avenues
Very much related to the above, but when forced to revise your approach, it opens up a whole new door of opportunity to seek out new inspirations and approaches to the task at hand.
3 – There is always another way
Talking specifically powerlifting, there is always another approach. There are so many variations of techniques and programs to trial that when someone says ‘they’ve tried everything’ I am pretty confident in calling bullshit.
4 – It helps to re-envision your goals and re-ignite your passion
When you truly want to win and push yourself towards your goals, falling just short can re-ignite your fire to want it more and push harder. Or sometimes you realise you set yourself up for failure by not setting the bar high enough.
5 – You learn to never give up
When you fail numerous times, but come back just one more it develops your ability to never give up. As cliché as it is, success is ultimately defined as standing up one more time than you have failed.
We are designed to fail, it allows us to grow and mature, accept that failure isn’t defeat and find the new way forward.
