Failure Is Required

One of my favorite activities is exercising and more specifically lifting weights.

My older brother introduced me to weight-lifting over 50 years ago.  I watched my older brother and several of his friends transform the shape, size and strength of their bodies.  My brothers endeavor into weight-lifting / bodybuilding coincided with the golden age of bodybuilding and we watched Mike Mentzer, Franco Columbo, Lance Dreher, Frank Zane, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many others compete.  It was remarkable to see and I became interested and started lifting weights.  The interesting thing about weight-lifting / bodybuilding is the high level of commitment and discipline required.

Over the decades I have made physical fitness a priority in my life and I have benefited from this commitment.

In recent years I have had the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience and have begun training numerous individuals in order to help them loose fat, gain muscle mass and improve their health.  One of the individuals that I began training expressed how difficult it is to consistently workout to make improvements.

In order to gain muscle-mass you must push your body to a new level of strength. You must in essence tear your muscles down so they can adapt and grow larger and stronger.  You must fail on a regular basis to succeed. 

The friend that I have been training questioned how for decades I could return to the gym only to underperform on a given day or miss on a new personnel strength record that I was striving to achieve. In response I explained that it isn’t failing that matters, it’s how we react to failure. 

Author John Maxwell states this very concisely in his book Failing Forward.

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to…failure.”

-              John Maxwell, Failing Forward

I have always perceived failure as a requirement for growth.  The reality is that all of us will fail regularly throughout our lives.  We will fail when learning something new, we will fail at relationships, we will fail while trying to reach a particular goal that we have.  However, I believe that the most successful people that I have known in my life never let failure stop them.  If you truly want to push yourself to new heights to achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams embrace the fact that …..

Failure is required.