Celebrating Failure

In high school I was on the track team. I was a great runner--I was in awesome shape in terms of my stamina and speed and ran short distance sprints. When I got to college, varsity track was obviously a thing of the past. I still went for runs from time to time, but it was nothing compared to my old ways.

Now, here I am a junior in college and I have completely lost my skillz!! I used to run a mile in about 6 minutes. Now, I usually do it around 9. This summer, I made it my goal to get back down below 7 minutes. It has been MUCH harder than I anticipated. It definitely falls under the category of "multiple failures."

Though I still haven't brought my time down to what it used to be, each failure has made me a better runner. Every time I ran, I knocked off a couple seconds. So even though I technically failed, I improved. Each failure was (is) one step closer to my ultimate goal.

This is representative of other "failures" in life. I learned that they may seem like failures in the moment, but they are only bringing us closer to the ultimate success. We either learn from them or they make us stronger.

Failure is hard. I personally get very frustrated when I fail. But I know that being successful is a million times more satisfying when it was hard to get there. Succeeding on the first try isn't nearly as rewarding!