A few weeks ago, in spin class the instructor singled me out and screamed at me to turn up the resistance on my bike. In that moment, he also gave me permission to fail – permission to put more tension on than my legs could handle. Since then, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s been a daily reminder, permission to fail.
The thing I’ve learned, and keep learning, is the worst that can happen is never that actually bad. My legs need to slow down and I don’t make it to the end of the race, I have to put down a barbell to rest, I can’t run the 10k. It’s easy to measure in sport or fitness, but the same is true in all aspects of life – a love interest declines an invitation for a drink, you don’t get that job you interviewed for, you didn’t get in to medical school. As the saying goes, a bad day on your ego is a good day on your soul.
But then there are times when you end up succeeding at something you never thought you could. That does something to your spirit and to your soul. It allows you to grow and it proves that our bodies can often do things our minds can lead us to believe we can’t. In a profound way, there is strength in accomplishing something you didn’t think you could.
One of my favourite events at the Olympics this year was the halfpipe. I watched in awe as athlete after athlete gave it their all – a full send – and one thing that shocked me is how many times they fell. The best athletes in the world on their biggest stage. They were willing to go so big, even when it made the potential for failure higher.
When Shaun White, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and someone who will go down as possibly the best snowboarder of all-time, went to take his final run ever in his fifth Olympic games, he fell. At the end of the run, he held his snowboard above his head and with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face, he walked away knowing he’d given the sport his all. Yet despite that ending, that failure, Shaun White’s legacy could not be viewed at as anything more than an enormous success.
And those two events are interconnected – the spin coach giving permission to every single person in that room to fail and the Olympic halfpipe event. The lesson seems simple – what’s worse than failing is not giving it your all. Because in doing that you fail yourself by never reaching your potential.
Granting permission to fail is making yourself vulnerable. It’s doing things that scare you and finding peace in the fact that the outcome may not be what you had hoped. It’s falling forward. It’s standing tall and giving yourself grace when you missed and you couldn’t do it. It’s trying again.
Set New Year’s resolutions you may not be able to keep for a full year. Make big goals that you may never be able to accomplish. Because not doing those things is worse than failing at them.
So here is my permission slip – to fail. I’m going to keep mine in my pocket and remind myself of it every day. And I hope you do too.
“Ultimately, the people who choose to champion originality are the ones who propel us forward. After spending years studying them and interacting with them, I am struck that their inner experiences were not any different from our own. They feel the same fear, the same doubt as the rest of us. What sets them apart is that they take action anyway. They know in their hearts that failing would yield less regret than failing to try.” — Adam Grant, Originals
Sara
