F is for Failure

Day 32 – February 1, 2010

F is for Failure

Failure seems so familiar to me. I feel like I've never succeeded at anything. I KNOW it's not true, I've done a lot. But it FEELS like I failed sometimes.

Well, I've failed again. I haven't been faithful to the Total Wellness Plan like I so wanted. I've eaten poorly, abstained from exercise, indulged myself in other things that is not helpful to the Plan. I kept thinking this time it will be different. This time I will succeed. This time I will get my life in order and I'll fix everything. Perhaps I took on too much at once. Perhaps my goals were too lofty to reach immediately, instead of goals that are easily reached like stepping stones.

So I gave up. I guess that's it right? I guess there's nothing else left to do. I mean how can I continue on my path to total wellness now that I've screwed everything up?

I guess there's one thing that I haven't done. It's the one ingredient missing from the past. I could get up, brush myself off and keep going. I can keep going. I can trudge ahead along this path that I've never walked down before. No one is keeping score. No one is judging how well I do this or if I do it with finesse. Nobody cares about the little kinks and bumps. All that matters is the goals. If I reach the goal and look back I won't think about the weeks when things weren't perfect. I won't worry about the times when things were rough. All that matters is that I keep going. I keep pushing.

Time for a cliché metaphor? Yes, please. It doesn't matter how long it takes to climb a mountain. It doesn't matter that a person took his/her time at the beginning and maybe had some doubt. It doesn't matter if the going was slow at first. No one cares or thinks about that in the end. All that anyone cares about is reaching the pinnacle. You can't climb up to the apex of the mountain without moving forward. You have to build upon the work you've made already. Even if you've walked 100 steps, you still can't make it to the top without those first steps. And if you rest for 2 weeks and then still keep going and eventually make it to the top, it doesn't matter.

So this time, my goal is refusing to fail, to give up, to forget about the Total Wellness Plan. I've already walked 100 steps and maybe i've stumbled back a few. But I've learned a lot about myself and I'm going to keep trudging forward. It may take a long time. It will probably be rough. I can do it.

The one thing that changes this time is that I'm going to fail at failing, fail at being a failure. I think that makes all the difference in the world.