December 5, 2016
Failure is such a heavy word to most. I’ve seen people view it as being “worthless”, “not capable”, or other super negative meanings. They put themselves into a downward negative spiral, which is crazy hard to bounce back from. I view failure as a very minor almost no existent setback. It’s more of a learning experience to better the current process, task, challenge, or whatever you are trying to achieve. To me, it just means you need to take a step back evaluate what is going on, change/fix it, and continue to strive towards accomplishing whatever it may be. I have failed so many times in life, Ha! far too many to count, which is just a part of the process. If you succeed at everything you do first try, what is the point? Not to mention, you obviously are not truly pushing yourself hard enough.
Take Jeeping for example. I went out this past weekend to paddle on a few lakes I really enjoy. The temperature was around 18 degrees (Fahrenheit), which is not idea to paddle in without a wet/drysuit. So I was going to drive to a state forest to drive on the trails instead. I came across an area that looked to be for Jeeping or at least those side-by-side things. I saw Jeep out climbing some hills and I decided, “Heck I will give it a go”. I wanted to get a taste for how my Rubicon handed off-road. I knew it would be a boss on the trails but I needed to learn and get a feel for it myself. Plus playing around with my axle lock and sway bar disconnect, super awesome! Plowed through some fairly deep ice mud pits, climbed some hills, and just had a blast. I then decided to attempt this smaller hill with a narrow top. Well.. I didn’t carry enough speed and bottomed out on the top of the hill. Being solo and without a wench I was truly stuck. I tried and tried to get out but nothing was working. Tied logs to my tires, build traction ramps out of rocks and logs, and got nowhere. This would be a classic example of a failure. As I waiting for my buddy to help give me a tow I evaluated the whole situation. Walked through my line and saw how I could improve it for next time I come across something similar.
