I'm not going to beat around the bush. Let's cut to the chase and say that we all have to fail in order to succeed because, to put it bluntly, we all suck at everything when we are born. Don't know how to talk, don't know how to walk, don't know right from wrong. Heck, we can't even open our eyes when we are first born. We really are stupid creatures out of the womb, but that's what failure is for. Failure is here as our teacher of life. It's one of the best teachers there is. You can take advantage of it with a positive attitude and learn from your mistakes, or you can let it succumb you into a dark corner for the rest of your life fearful of what might happen to you if somebody catches you doing "the right thing". Don't get it twisted, failing is always the right thing to do if you have any ambition for your future.

You cannot learn from anything but failure. For example, you can't go to the gym to just go through the motions and expect results on the other side. You need to push yourself hard enough to fail at whatever exercise you are doing in order to grow a muscle or produce more strength. Some people fail so hard they break bones and tear body tissues, but to have an injury showing you tried something new is something to be proud of. It's all the more reason to perform well in therapy so you can do better the next go around at the gym. This mindset is transferrable to any area of your life.

Let's say you fail at the squat exercise at the gym. You've squatted so many times, your butt muscles are tired, you're finished. You can't do another repetition. You can't even walk up the stairs. That's something you will not forget, and keeping in mind that your muscles are going to be repairing themselves so you are stronger the next day is something I personally look forward to as a personal trainer, and you should too. No matter the situation, the fact that you can understand yourself and your body well enough to know that you can always come back to this place in your mind that says, "This is nothing I can't handle because I've already overcome so much more at the gym," is pretty amazing.  Muscles don't grow or get stronger without having to go through some stress, and neither does your character.

So maybe you're not the person you've wanted to become yet. This is something I personally struggle with - not knowing - not knowing what might happen to you and your life next week, a year from now, 10 years from now. You sit there in contemplation, impatiently waiting for a better idea to pop up in your brain rather than just doing what you know is right for you in the moment. However, this doesn't mean you have failed at life. You're just not where you are meant to be yet, more of a temporary failure. Good thing the universe has a funny way of putting itself together after trial and error and a few hardships along the way to get you to whatever your goals may be. You'll realize karma is very real in that way.

Jim Rohn, whom I've mentioned in recent posts, always said, " Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day." You can't take a body that has 30 years of poor eating habits and 100 pounds of extra weight sitting upon its ankles and turn it around into a perfect beach body in two weeks. It simply cannot be done. The process is a long one that takes a lot of patience, but it only takes a moment to decide that your life is not the way you'd like it to be. Adapt yourself to new and better habits that serve you well, and don't worry about anybody's moral opinion but your own. Today is a good day to begin.