Failure = Success

The pace of the world today is fast and everyone wants instant gratification.  This statement includes everything from how fast our computer boots up, to how fast traffic is moving, to service at a restaurant, and mostly success. People want success now!  They want to experience success immediately and are not willing to go through trials and tribulations to achieve it.  My dad used to tell me, ¨anything worth doing involves work, there is no such thing as overnight success.¨  Think about it, if we had immediate success, we wouldn’t build the character we need to sustain true success.  The struggles, adversity, triumphs, and victories are all part of the success building process.

The College Football season started this weekend and everyone is talking about the playoff system that will go into effect this year.  The reason I mention this is because at the end of the season fans will want certain coaches fired and certain coaches hired.  They will of course base this on wins and losses.  Now, I understand that collegiate athletics is a multi-million dollar business and tickets are not being sold to watch a losing team.  However, our society expects overnight success and one or two losses can place coaches in the hot seat.  I mention this pattern for college football but it can happen in any collegiate sport, and even down into the high school and junior high ranks.  

I recently finished reading The Carpenter by Jon Gordon.  This is a story about a carpenter that shares his wisdom with Michael, a businessman, who attempts to save his business in the face of adversity, rejection, fear, and failure.  The story has numerous messages involving how failure can lead to success.  The Carpenter encourages us to see failure as a test, a teacher, a detour to a better outcome, and an event that builds a better you.  ¨Every struggle, every challenge, every failure is meant to help show us who we are in this moment and how far we have to go to become all we are meant to be.¨

I took my family to watch the movie ¨When the Game Stands Tall¨ today.  If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it.  The movie is based on the incredible win streak of the De La Salle High School football team: 151 straight victories over 12 years.  The real story is not ¨the streak¨ of victories but how Coach Bob Ladouceur emphasized purpose, significance, sacrifice, commitment, and teamwork from his players.  It’s these traits that the coach instilled in his players that determined how they responded when ¨the streak¨ came to an end.  

Failure can provide opportunities that will assist us in deciding how much we really want something.  Will we give up?  Or work harder, get better, learn more, commit more and get better?  Success doesn’t happen overnight.  It’s the losses, failures, challenges, and if you are a coach, disgruntled fans that serve as defining moments on the journey toward success.  These trials are not meant to be final or fatal, they build character and integrity.  We should view failure as a blessing instead of a curse, because without failure we cannot become successful.