Failure is simply an ill-perceived opportunity

I’ve been on a health transformation journey for some time, and it’s been an interesting as well as difficult path which I look forward to writing about and continuing to experience. I’m the kind of person who enjoys listening to the experiences of others while I do something, and in this case, it was walking. Walking is a hidden-in-plain sight key to weight loss, and I hope to write at length on this topic when I reach my full goals for shredding fat.

While casually pacing around my living room during some dead time waiting for a delivery, I browsed some reddit posts which were trying to get people’s input on the subject of keeping healthy through the everyday use of a few thousand more steps than one may be used to taking. I came across this comment which stood out to me as initially motivating, but as I put down my phone to contemplate these ideas, I found myself picturing its application elsewhere. Below is the key part of the comment.

You are going to fail. How you react to the failures will define how successful you are. Failure in this context should only make you more educated, and stronger for the next attempt. Fail gracefully.

Let’s keep the example of walking for simplicity, although soon I will change course. If someone lives a sedentary lifestyle and only gets in around 4,000 steps per day, a week of them immediately jumping to 8,000 or 10,000 steps per day will shred their body. Depending on the person and intensity of the steps, it could take a few days or even a couple of weeks to recover. They’ll feel awful. This had happened to me long ago, so I can tell you that, without a doubt, it feels terrible.

For many or perhaps even most people, this would be considered a failure. Their goal steps are incredibly unlikely to be met while they recover - I know mine weren’t - and that alongside the pain will bring them a feeling of hopelessness. It’s as if they’ve painstakingly crafted a massive boulder-like snowball, only for them to trop and let it roll down the hill to its inevitable destruction.

There is another way to view these exact same events, however. The person challenged themselves to go beyond their definition of normal, and - despite the eventual outcome - was successful in this, more than once at that. They have given themselves evidence that they not only possess the ability to be greater, but that they have already been on that path and enjoyed it.

I’ve been listening every now and then to Atomic Habits by James Clear, and one of the points he raises is that each time we take an action towards a goal, we provide ourselves proof that we are not only capable of reaching that goal, but that we are the kind of person who does this regularly like it’s nothing. Imagine someone who views themselves as a runner based on their first week of efforts, and compare them to another beginner with imposter syndrome who hardly has the confidence to call it a hobby. The ‘runner’ is constantly building evidence supporting their case, and so is the ‘imposter.’

Despite both exerting the same efforts and getting likely very similar results, their mindset entirely changes the perceived outcome. Now let’s return to the injury point from earlier. Our runners have gone a little too far and gotten themselves hurt. Though both will doubtlessly feel down over it, only one of them will view this as a possible hobby-ending setback. The ‘imposter’ lacks the viewpoint to take this as a learning experience, to learn at what increments they can make gradual improvements towards self-betterment. Te ‘runner’ on the other hand, as you’ve no doubt guessed, is running the numbers and using their healing time to prepare for more optimal runs in future.

Failure as one may initially perceive it is nothing more than a temporary setback due to overambition. It is also nothing less than an opportunity to better adjust expectations and account for the mistake in future. For a long time, I was the ‘imposter.’ It took far too many years of this before it finally clicked in my mind. Over the last few months, maybe the last year if we’re generous with the timeline, I’ve been gradually developing the mental character required to properly take advantage of shortcomings and use them to facilitate success. Seeing that comment on reddit brought proper words to the instinctual feelings and thoughts that have been roughly (and no doubt sub-optimally) composing my transformation journey.

Now that I have this clearly in my mind, I strongly suspect it will entirely change my life - not only in my fitness endeavors, but all others as well. Mess up an Arabic lesson? See it as an opportunity to sharpen your focus and revisit it refreshed. Can’t seem to get the hang of a concept in a book, whether religious or non? See it as an opportunity to understand the ways you tend to adapt to information most so that you can seek adequate supplementary material and avoid this issue in future.

Failure has never been the end of the road, it’s just a milestone we reach when making progress which allows us to prepare for the next one. It’s up to us how we use that time, and what the ultimate outcome of failure will be.

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته