Failure.
Sunday, July 29th, 2012Failure.
This past week I had the great privilege to lift and train with an amazing trainer and one of my best friends, Chris Keseling of CK Health and Fitness. We were doing this workout doing a bunch of different time under tension exercises, pause routines, negative resistance, etc. In the middle of the workout I started to pickup the 15 pound dumbbells to hit another set then I reached over for the 10 pounders, and I started to lift.
After I finished the set I realized that I am afraid to fail. I am 100% afraid of failure, in fact, so afraid of it that it worked its way right down into my workout routine. I was choosing lighter weights to complete the workout a little easier as opposed to choosing ones that would push me to the point where I would fail. Why? Because it’s harder to fail than it is to succeed, but as Chris pointed out, you really can’t succeed if you aren’t willing to fail. You need risk to have a reward. Life is full of those opposites and I need to learn to embrace them.
Applying this to drums, I’ve said this before, what do we learn working on things that we are already great at, nothing really. Muscle memory maybe. But what do we learn when we try to do something that we can’t naturally do, we learn everything. I try to spend at least 1 hour a day these days failing. haha. I know that sounds horrible, but the truth is, spending time learning something really challenging – even if I can’t complete it – makes me way better than just working on records I already can play inside and out. Try this. Take in the defeat. I promise it gets easier over time.
I love these lyrics below. They speak truth that we are all a failure to some degree. But we are also redeemable as well. Without the prospect of failure, there is no success. Let’s embrace this fear that so many of us have, let’s get out of our bubbles and shoot for something that we don’t think we can do. That’s where we’re going to be become better at what we do, but more importantly, that’s where we’ll become better people.
“We are a beautiful letdown, painfully uncool, the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures and the fools. What a beautiful letdown, are we salt in the wound? Let us sing one true tune…“ – SwitchFoot.
AD