Failing Forward

Hi friends! Can you believe it’s September already? As we round the last quarter of the year, I was greeted by a slight cool breeze this morning, a much welcome break from the searing heat and humidity we have been plagued with the majority of the summer. Today’s post is a little random, but I was inspired by something that seems to be a constant in my life, if even in a small way lately: failure. Now, before you roll your eyes and think that I’m having a pity party for myself, just bear with me for a bit (please).

I’ve always been a person of many passions, and often it is a struggle to blend all of them together into something that makes sense. I spend most of my days trying to flip and reverse ideas into something coherent, and often come up empty. Combine that with thinking about the constant increase in the cost of living, a lingering global pandemic, and all of the other unprecedented things we continue to live through, its easy to see how one (ok, me) can feel like I may be failing.

Monday night my perspective shifted.

I’ve had a business venture in mind for several years, and Monday was the first step in making it a tangible reality. I started a program called CO.STARTERS, which aims to equip ventures in all stages with the resources to turn ideas into action. As excited as I was to start the program, I also felt overwhelmed with all the information being presented. We got to a section that was titled “Is it worth it?”, where our facilitator challenged us to think about if the venture we are proposing is worth the risk we are embarking on. A few people mentioned that their venture would be worth it if they didn’t “fail”, to which he followed up with “What is failure to you?”

Before I could speak, one of the members of our cohort took the words out of my mouth: “To me failure is not trying. I’m used to excelling at things, so I don’t try anything I know I won’t excel at, even if I don’t want to do it.” It was almost as if my mail was being read at that very moment. I thought back over my own life; I was always pretty competent, and my teachers always made sure I knew they thought I was “gifted”. As I got older, I stuck to the things I knew I would be good at because…well, why wouldn’t I? Who wants to willingly fail at something? Why take a risk if I didn’t need to? Right…

Fast forward to Monday night, and I realized the real failure was me not trying. So Monday, I decided to try, and hopefully at the end of this program, even if I decide this business venture is not for me, I can shift my perspective. I didn’t fail, I just found something that doesn’t work, and I’ll pivot to something that does. So my friends, take the risk. Fail. Try. It’s not over unless you quit.

Love Always,

CDOG