I started this blog back in August 2019 and didn’t make it past one post. That is me. That is my whole life. I get the desire to do something. I get that fire in my gut that says this is finally going to be the thing that I do, and see it through to its finality. With this blog, I failed before I even got started. As the days and the weeks went by that I thought about this, I became ashamed. I was ashamed and embarrassed for all the people that I got excited about my journey and how I let them down and let myself down. One more thing to add to the list of things that I started and didn’t finish. Please wait while I take my seat on the losers bench.
How can I look myself in the mirror after failing? No wonder it seems that no one in my life takes me seriously. I can’t ever finish anything. I am a failure. I am a loser. I am a horrible human being. That my friends are the legit thoughts that run through my head as I analyze my life. My heart and my head are at odds though. I know my life is valuable. My faith in God tells me so, but my hurt heart tells me otherwise. I have struggled my whole life feeling inadequate and trying to get over all my personal failures. So much that I drowned out the great things that I have accomplished. We are our own worst critic, right?
I often wonder what life would be like if we couldn’t remember our mistakes. Does the absence of a reminder make things better? What if it did? What if we could remove things in our lives that reminded us of the past? That past that is filled with failures. What if by doing so we were able to completely erase the memory of those failures. In life we have those reminders of our stumbles and our failures. Maybe its a scar on our skin. Maybe its a person missing from our life. Maybe its the weight on our bodies from overeating. Maybe its our criminal record that haunts us of our misdoing. Maybe its just a memory.
At one time in our life we have wished away that constant reminder of our failures. We say we learned our lesson and won’t repeat it so please take away the painful reminder. Please make it go away. But is that really OK? Do we really want to forget? I think, unfortunately, the answer is no. Even though the reminders are unpleasant, they are necessary. They are needed in order to keep ourselves focused on moving forward and hopefully not repeating our mistakes that led to failures, or at least reducing the chance of repeating them. We need to see the negative effects of our misdeeds or we will inherently repeat them. We failed for a reason. We obviously thought that there was going to be a better outcome or we wouldn’t have tried. The measure of ones self is this. As long as the # of times you fail is not more than the # of times you get up then you are doing a great job. If you are alive to read this then you are doing a great job. You are here. You are present. You are still trying and that is all that matters.
I have decided to add additional comments regarding our past. While I said that we shouldn’t wish it away, I also believe that we shouldn’t dwell. Our memories are meant to just be soft reminders. Our past mistakes should not take center stage in our present and should only be remembered enough to remind us that we survived. That we GOT UP! So, if you are UP, then you are making it. Keep those memories in the past and use them to your advantage to remind you of the wonderful person that you are.
What is one failure that you were able to turn into a success?
My Journey to the Mountain 