Fail Forward Towards Success
Keep Swinging for the Fences with Babe Ruth (The Secondhand Inspiration Project)
The Secondhand Inspiration Project begins with a motivational quote and ventures wherever the creative path meanders.
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” ― Babe Ruth
Like most people, I love talking about my successes. But I also confess that failure has been my most effective teacher. Whenever I think that I know everything, I somehow discover new, unglamorous ways to fail. Because of failure, I continue learning, evolving, and persevering.
When coping with defeat, the outlook is everything. We can allow our missteps to be an event that has happened, but we can’t accept them as part of our identity. When we label ourselves as failures, we begin to feel, think, and act like failures. But if we’re still trying and haven’t quit, we haven’t failed. We fail only when we choose to pin that label on ourselves.
Whenever we feel we’ve failed, remember that we’re cultivating toughness and building firepower to succeed in the next challenge. Every time we fail better than the previous iteration, we build a more secure foundation. It’s like building muscle — each tear will make us stronger over time.
Here are some ways embracing failure can work to our advantage: