3 Points to Ponder
- “We are all going to face challenges in our life. The question isn’t if, but when. Are you strengthening your hands today to carry the challenges of tomorrow?”
- “The idea of a self-made man or woman is complete crap. Anyone with lasting accomplishments had a team of people going before paving the way, people surrounding them holding them up, and people behind picking up the areas where things dropped. Are you recognizing your team or are you believing the myth of being self-made?”
- “Learning to fail is critical to achieve success. Speed up the rate of failure and you will speed up the time until success. Are you okay with failure to speed up the time till success?”
2 Quotes to Share
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Dennis Waitley
“We develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and obstacles.” -Stephen Covey
1 Story of Impact
Growing up, I identified as an athlete. I ate, slept, and breathed sports. In second grade, I finally had the opportunity to show off my athletic prowess through our school track meet. The day came for that first track meet… and I failed. Miserably. The events I thought I would win, I didn’t even place. I was embarrassed and devastated and I hated those feelings. I vowed to never let this happen again. I started doing push-ups and sit-ups before I went to bed. After school, I jogged to the school playground and ran the 50-yard and 200-yard dash, practiced the long-jump, and pulled myself up over and over on the chin-up bar. Come the beginning of my third grade year, I was ready, as I had taken the failure of the previous year, learned from it, bottled it, and used it as a catalyst to do better the next year. And better I did, setting three school records and placing in all four events. Now, elementary track meets mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I learned a valuable lesson at an early age. When I was faced with failure, would I let it define me or would I walk through it to a better tomorrow? No matter how you’ve handled challenges in the past, you can always choose a new path tomorrow. And that path lies within you. It is your choice.
