Making a Splash

Are you the type of person that feels the water with your toes before you jump into a pool, or do you just jump in not caring about how cold the water may be?  If you’re like me, sometimes you may get ahead of yourself and just dive into a situation head first not really looking into the future or what may lie ahead.  To me, life has to be like this more often than not.  Sometimes jumping into the vast ocean of emotions, friendships, struggle, success, opportunity, and heartache we call life is what needs to happen in order for us to move past our insecurities and fears. Living life by testing the temperature of the water inch by inch until your end may not be the best thing for you.  Going into the water by taking the steps at the end of the pool may be a safer, more controlled experience, but you waste time getting into it.  You take the steps, carefully and methodically, but what do you see?  Someone on the side has just decided to jump in and now they are enjoying something you wanted but were too afraid to just jump in and get.  They have now passed you by.  They are having fun.

I’m not saying this is the best advice, nor am I saying this is the correct advice for every moment in life.  What I am saying is to not be afraid of what the results of something you choose to do will be sometimes.  Yes, jumping into the water without feeling it first may lead to a shocking surprise of cold water, but now you’ve learned something about yourself.  You’ve learned that you have moments of being fearless.  You can be bold and just go for it sometimes.  Dive into life with freeing abandon.  Picture who you want to be as a person tomorrow, a month, a year, 5 years down the road.  Visualize that picture and just go for it.  Commit yourself and everything about yourself to that vision.  Believe in yourself.  Believe in every step, every jump, every dive, and every leap.  Yes, sometimes you may get hurt by just jumping in, but life should be about doing everything you can to enjoy every second you have been given.  Embrace yourself, your beauty, and the beauty of everyone and everything around you.  By diving straight in you may find a hidden talent or passion no one has ever seen.  You may discover something new about yourself that is greater than anything you could have ever imagined.

What I’m saying is simple.  Be fearless. You control your life and the actions you take.  So why not live it to its fullest?

Don’t hesitate to do great things with your life.

Don’t be afraid of what lies ahead.

Most of all…..

Whatever you do,

Wherever you go,

Don’t be afraid to make a splash.

Never be afraid to fail!

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s third key to success was to never be afraid of failing.

If you are afraid of failure, you will never try what you truly want to do.  If you never try, you can not and will not ever achieve success.  Plain and simple.  For every failed attempt comes yet another failed attempt, and another, and another, and another, and another.  What would life be if everything were so simple you got it on the first time though?  It is those failed attempts at something that makes getting it that much better.  The feeling of reward and accomplishment is magnified with every failed attempt.  With every failed attempt comes another opportunity for growth, for better understanding, and for truly finding what you have deep down inside of you.  Take each failed attempt and fight to stand back up.  Life will no doubt throw some curve balls your way and beat you down into the ground with failure looking like the only ending to a certain event.

It’s not!

It is when life throws you down on the ground that you must stand up, fight back, and try again! Try harder! Try with more passion! Try with everything you have!  Never give up!  True success is not measured in the final result, it’s measured in how much you’ve grown as a person to get to that final result.  It’s each step, stumble, falter, and fall that is the true measure of success.

Thomas Edison once said “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Don’t be that guy! The guy who misses out on success because he was too afraid to fail one more time.  Accept the fact that each and every one of us will fail on essentially a daily basis.  Hold onto that fact and embrace it.  Be prepared for what lies ahead!  Failure lies ahead… but the road to true success is paved with stones made of failure.

Finish the road you’re on.

Finish the path you’re creating for yourself.

Never, EVER, be afraid to fail again!

-Eric Welter

For more thoughts on failure you can check out two of my other postings on the topic!

Failure

Mistakes: The Beautiful Accomplishments

Mistakes, the beautiful accomplishments

Lately, I’ve been in a weird funk. Nothing bad. Nothing horrible. Just different. I for some reason have been caught up on my failures, my mistakes, my mess-ups, and my inabilities.  So I found myself asking, “Why?” Why have I allowed myself to continuously think of these things that bring me down?  It’s like I chained myself to a boulder and pushed it off a cliff into the ocean.  Now comes the realization. 

I’m not perfect.  No one is perfect.  No one has come close to perfect.  No one will ever be perfect.  So through my failures and imperfections, I have found myself realizing I have something in common with every person that has stepped foot on this planet.  Each and every one of us has this in common, it’s a fact and an inevitability that you can not escape.

This post may have started off like a shot at everyone and it may have come off as a pessimist’s look at the world.

HOLD IN THERE, IT GETS BETTER!

One of the greatest minds in American History, Thomas Edison, said one of my favorite quotes of all time.

It is every mistake, every failure, and every imperfection that creates the pathway to success.  Without mistakes you would never learn.  When you succeed you are not learning new things, you are just using the knowledge you already have. 

Every time you fail, you learn. 

Every mistake is a learning opportunity.

Every small imperfection in all the activities you take part in creates who you are. 

It is those “10,000 ways that don’t work” that builds your knowledge and appreciation for reaching your final goal. Yeah it may suck when those 10,000 ways are your first 10,000 tries, but it’s those attempts that make the final step, the one you take to pass the finish line, that much sweeter. 

What’s holding you back?  What’s making you hesitate?  Don’t ever let the fear of failing, the fear of imperfection, and the fear of making mistakes dictate the path you want to travel down.  It’s one step at a time.  One foot in front of the other.  Inch by inch.  Step by step.  Attempt after attempt.  It’s time to be tenacious and to never back down. 

Fight for what you want no matter what the terrain in front of you looks like. 

Failure

It is something that every person knows about, a thing that must be conquered in order to find true happiness, but what is failure really?  Thomas Edison said it perfectly when he said, “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Giving up is giving in to everyday failures, giving up your dreams and aspirations, giving up something you want so badly you would go to the end of the world to get it.  If it’s usually something so great and so grand, why do people give it up?  Is it too tough of a goal?  Did you set your expectations too high?  I for one, give in to the thoughts of failure too often.  Too often I say to myself “I can’t do it”. College courses have proved to be the toughest thing I have had to endure in my 22 years of life, but am I really considering myself a failure when I don’t do well?  After thinking long and hard about it, the only thing I failed was myself.  I failed in time management and responsibility to do the work in which I have set forth to do and try my hardest at.  Failure is not setting your mind to something you really want because you give in to the many temptations life has to give to you.  It’s being afraid of hard work because it looks too difficult to complete.  If you don’t succeed you just have to keep trying, no matter how many times you don’t succeed, keep pushing toward what you want.  Nothing can stop you from your goals; nothing can alter your ambitions or change your desires.  It might sound a bit cliché, but you really can do anything you put your mind to.  Nothing is holding you back besides yourself.  What is failure besides an inevitability of everyday life? It’s another battle waiting to be overcome.  It’s an opportunity to grow as a person, as a friend, as a student, as an athlete, or as a human being in general.  Failure is no more a chance for personal destruction as it is a chance for personal growth.  It’s up to you to realize you need to take every failure and turn it into a positive experience.  It’s up to you as a person to make every failure a motivational opportunity, a chance to push yourself further and harder than ever before.  What is failure?  It’s the most positive thing that can happen to you, it’s an inevitable experience everyone will run into on almost a daily occurrence, but most of all, it means you’re only a step or two away from an even greater success.

 

-Eric Welter