The Upside of Failure: Why I Associate Failure with Success
Train to Failure
In weightlifting, there’s a common belief: Train to failure. For every rep after your breaking point, with muscles are burning with lactic acid, telling your brain to stop-- that’s when the reps start to matter.
Heck, you’ve been training for this very moment; don’t waste it by stopping now. Keep lifting past the point where your muscles beg for mercy. Because pain is in the mind, not in the body. And this is when weightlifting feels like an out of body, religious experience.
For every rep after your breaking point, that’s when the reps start to matter.
“Train to Failure” has become my credence. The more I live, the more I observe its truth. For every difficult or challenging experience I’ve overcome, I am rewarded with the sweetest sense of accomplishment.
One of my hardest life challenges was surviving an eight month job drought.
I was laid off from my first job after college, after three loyal years. I was without savings, living in the second most expensive city in the US - and had no idea how I was going to afford next month’s rent, much less, the month after. I was living check-to-check, constantly hustling for my next freelance gig -- working more hours than I had ever worked, scrapping by rent and making my ends meet (i.e. rent, gas, food, and car insurance -- in that order). This went on an excruciating eight months as I continued applying for full-time positions; which felt like sending my resume into an empty abyss. Radio silence. The economy had taken a nose-dive (now named the Great Recession of 2008)-, and there was no demand for a fresh-out-of-college, entry-level specialist, who proclaimed a “do anything” skillset. I was too junior, and underqualified to help with their limited budgets and very specific needs.
After an eight month drought, I finally tasted relief when I was offered and exuberantly accepted a position at a dot-com Santa Monica company; office located next to Yahoo! I was “a perfect fit”; they offered me the job on the spot! I was relieved to transition from struggling freelancer, to full-time salaried position at a relaxed tech company with endless snacks, happy hours and weekly catered lunches. It felt like the job jackpot. And that sweet success, would not have tasted so sweet if I had not experienced the bitterness of unemployment.
To this day, I would not take back a moment of that struggle. It was painful, the instability, nail-biting fear of potentially vacating the city I as I was just getting my roots. Being on the brink of exiting was like a giant stone I carried in my pocket day in and day out.
To this day, I would not take back a moment of that struggle.
But it was in those moments of living on the edge -- that I later recall when I think I’m having problems. When I think I’m stressed about my job or money, I go back to that place. And I’m newly reminded of my ability to be stretched to the limits. And am reassured that I could do it all over again, and do it better than before. I know that with certainty. It is that certainty that fills me with a sense of calm, pride and joy. It’s the beauty of doing hard things. Hard things are hard for a reason, they are also the most rewarding.
It’s the beauty of doing hard things.
My most rewarding life accomplishments come from pain. I embrace failure as an opportunity to learn, reassess my weaknesses and strengths; and then adapt, learn and overcome.
To fail is to give up; and I am not one to give up easily. When I workout to YouTube (especially during these shelter-in-place days), the trainers egg me on: those who fail are the ones who give up. With life’s ups and downs, I embraced failure, and practice resilience.
As Angela Lee Duckworth mentioned in her TED talk, “Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”