When Life Give You Lemons

During our lifetime, we set lots of goals for ourselves that we work towards achieving. A high schooler may be working towards getting into the college of their dreams. A recent college graduate may be working towards getting that dream job, or getting accepted into a graduate program. An entrepreneur may be working their tail off to get their new business off the ground. Maybe we’re trying to set ourselves apart from our co-workers to get promoted to the next level. Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we don’t achieve the goal we were shooting for. That leads us to today’s topic: failure and how we deal with it.

As a big sports fan, I’ve watched countless big games or big events. When an athlete or a team does not win the big game, or the big event, especially when they were expected to do so. I’ve always wondered how they move on when they’ve worked so hard for this one moment and come up short? Truth be told, I started writing this blog post many months ago when my sports example was much more relevant, so I beg your forgiveness if this sounds a bit stale. My failure this year has been my lack of content for my blog. I’m trying hard now to rectify that. So here goes with my stale example.

Each Olympic cycle, there are those athletes from whom great things are expected. For them, it’s not about the experience, it’s about going for the gold. Anything short of achieving that goal is deemed failure, which seems ridiculous to me because most of us will never be that good at anything to even make it to the Olympics in the first place. Those athletes are defined by that moment. If they succeed, they’ll always be known as an Olympic champion. If they fail, they will always be known for not reaching their potential. It’s all pretty harsh when you think about it. As an athlete, you’ve trained your whole life for that one moment, and, for some reason, on that day you needed to perform your best, it just didn’t happen, or someone just outperformed you. I always wondered how those athletes who didn’t get what they came for handled the defeat. How did it shape the rest of their lives?

I was listening to my favorite radio station on satellite radio awhile back and heard an artist who was being interviewed say something similar to thoughts that had been going through my mind related to my Olympics viewing this past winter. I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t remember exactly how it was said, but in essence, he said his music was about encouraging people not to be destroyed by the terrible things that happen to us.

We’ve all had those moments where we realized that something we have worked so hard to achieve wasn’t going to happen. We were going to fail in reaching our goal. Coming to that realization is gut wrenching and soul crushing. Personally, however, I think we learn so much more about ourselves, and life in general, when we fail.

We can react to failure in one of two ways: we can give up and think all is lost, or we can get up, dust ourselves off, and figure out a path to move forward. As a parent of a child with a chronic illness, I feel I failed him in so many ways. I must have done something wrong when I was pregnant to cause this. If I did more for him, he might be farther along in his development. I’ve failed because I haven’t done more to make his seizures go away. I fail him because I spend too much time working and not with him. I could drive myself nuts, and have, by thinking of all the ways I’ve failed my child. But while I might have every excuse in the world to curl up in a ball and give up, I’ve chosen not to. I’ve tried to make the best of the cards I’ve been dealt and move forward. I think of all the wonderful people I have met because of what has happened to us. Of all the wonderful experiences we’ve had because of our circumstances. I think of my child who is one of the happiest kids on the planet and thriving, and of all the people who love him for who he is.

What I have learned by the things in life that haven’t gone my way is that failure does not have to defeat or define you. In some ways, I think failure has made me stronger. I think of failure as a course correct. It’s like when your using your GPS to get somewhere and you fail to make a turn that you’ve been told to make. The GPS has you go a different way, and in the end, you still reach your destination. And, maybe that different route causes you to see something you may not have experienced had you made the right turn. Who knows?

So my takeaway for you today boys and girls is to not let the terrible things in life destroy you. Make the best of it and see what you can learn from your failures. When life gives you lemons, pull up your big boy or big girl pants, dust yourself off and make yourself a vodka lemonade.