We tend to look at our successes as part effort, part skill, and part luck. Yet we tend to embrace our failures as irrefutable evidence that we are not good enough! The thing is, BOTH our successes and failures usually result from a combination of factors. The only difference is, it is our FAILURES that often have the power to teach us the most about who we are, what we’re made of, what we want, and what’s important to us!
EVERY successful person has failed miserably at one point or another. In fact, most of them have failed many, many times. Actually, they’ve probably failed more times than they’ve succeeded!
I remember hearing the analogy between how we react to our failures vs. how a baby responds to failing at things like standing for the first time or taking his or her first step. As babies, most of us tried many times to stand on our own before actually succeeding. When we tried to walk, we likely fell before we ever took our first independent steps. Yet we KEPT GOING despite our failures, knowing that eventually we would succeed. Even as babies, we recognized the importance of working toward a goal…and of trying again when we didn’t succeed as we’d hoped.
Yet as adults, we don’t always display this same dedication to our goals. All too often, when things get too difficult, we give up. We tell ourselves that it’s not meant to be, that we don’t have what it takes, that it’s just too hard…the stories we use to deter ourselves from going after what we want are endless.
So what if instead of allowing the stories our adult minds have crafted about what we CAN’T do control us, we instead chose to think like babies? Babies don’t spin tales about their own ineptitude. They don’t assume they’re failures because something didn’t work the first time. They don’t give up because another baby achieved a milestone before they did. Instead, they focus on what they want and they GO AFTER IT…often with a single-minded sense of purpose.
So what if today, you set aside ALL the stories you are telling yourself that are holding you back? What if you let go of the sting of your past failures? What if next time you fail you remind yourself that it means you are THAT much closer to succeeding? What might you be able to accomplish if you learn to think like a baby?
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