Succeeding Through Failure
“There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.” - Laurence J. Peter
Today, I failed. After running the Honolulu Marathon in December I challenged myself by running the 8 mile Great Aloha Run in under an hour. After all, if I can run twenty-six 10 minute miles in a row, I should be able to run eight 7 minute miles in a row.
I didn’t even come close. I did, however, learn a lot from the experience.
To train for speed, I started running timed miles on the treadmill at the gym. Every minute running on the treadmill was excruciatingly boring. My eyes were glued to clock in front of me. Watching the seconds tick by killed all my passion and love for the sport. Running a 7 minute mile was really hard for me. I could barely do two in a row without feeling like my lungs were going to explode. Without passion, I simply couldn’t devote the energy needed to succeed.
I didn’t fail because I didn’t enjoy running fast. Being good at something often requires that you endure some sort of overwhelming hardship to get to where you want to be. I’ve never been a fast runner, but I want to be - and that desire is enough to get me there. I failed because I didn’t change my approach when it was clear that what I was doing wasn’t working.
I find this particularly relevant when I communicate with people. It’s like vigorously trying to change someone’s mind by repeatedly telling them they’re wrong. Sometimes an approach just won’t work no matter how many times your try it. That doesn’t mean your goal is unattainable. It just means you need to be smarter. Take a step back and get a fresh perspective. Better yet, get someone else’s opinion.
The irony is that had I just trained normally by running outside like I did for the marathon, I would have done far better than I did. I would have run at least twice a week for 8 miles at a time, greatly increasing my cardiovascular endurance and speed in the process. What I did instead was half heartedly run a couple miles a week on the treadmill.
I like to think that if you don’t fail, you’re not trying hard enough. Some people venture to say that you should fail as often as 50% of the time, just to make sure that you’re trying hard enough. I don’t know if you need to fail any set amount of times, but I do know that the ultimate failure is not learning from your mistakes.
