{"id":1257,"date":"2014-02-11T14:29:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T14:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2014-02-11T14:29:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T14:29:39","slug":"failing-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/failing-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Failing Forward."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fear can lead you to believe crazy things.\u00a0 Like when Shain is out of town, I pretty much convince myself every night that I am about to be murdered.\u00a0 But I am not talking about that kind of fear, I am talking about the fear of failure, fear of not being good enough&#8230;. which can also be crippling.<\/p>\n<p>I used to be afraid of failure.\u00a0 I used to be afraid of disappointing other people, of embarrassing myself.\u00a0 This fear caused me to second guess all of my abilities.\u00a0 In college, no matter how hard I worked in the off season or how well practices went&#8230;fear of messing up a play would cripple me in games.\u00a0 It has been something I have struggled with in all areas of my life for as long as I can remember.\u00a0 I feel it before every race I am trying to hit a PR and going into almost every single tough workout.\u00a0 I feel it when trying to prove myself at work.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/soccer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1260 aligncenter\" alt=\"soccer\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/soccer.jpg\" width=\"289\" height=\"404\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/soccer.jpg 433w, http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/soccer-215x300.jpg 215w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 289px) 100vw, 289px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But guess what happened last year? I failed.\u00a0 I missed my BQ time not once but&#8230;twice.\u00a0 I failed at something I worked really hard for and thought for sure I had in the bag.\u00a0 And I failed in front of everybody.\u00a0 It was painful and it was embarrassing.\u00a0 But despite all that, it wasn&#8217;t THAT bad.\u00a0 I missed my time?\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 Is my life over?\u00a0 Did all my friends and family dis-own me? Did I lose my job?\u00a0 Did my life fall apart? Of course not.\u00a0 <strong>Sometimes we chalk up failure to be this big scary thing in our mind, when really it is a necessity to move forward.\u00a0 Failure is not a bad thing. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It took my body over two months to recover from doing two marathons in a month.\u00a0 Every single workout (even going on the stupid elliptical)\u00a0 just felt plain awful.\u00a0 I thought I may never get back to where I was, because not only was my body hurt but my confidence was also wounded.\u00a0 But I kept plugging away.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/polarvortex.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1259 aligncenter\" alt=\"polarvortex\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/polarvortex.jpg\" width=\"301\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/polarvortex.jpg 428w, http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/polarvortex-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 301px) 100vw, 301px\" \/><\/a><em>Who is afraid of running in a polar vortex?\u00a0 NOT US!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Within the last month I have felt my strength and speed gaining momentum.\u00a0 I now have this weird new attitude going into my workouts.\u00a0 Usually, going into a race or a tough lift I think to myself&#8230; &#8220;Okay, I guess we will see how this goes.&#8221;\u00a0 What a terrible way to go into something!\u00a0 Now I go in with confidence.\u00a0 No second thoughts.\u00a0 \u00a0 I am not afraid anymore.\u00a0 I am angry.\u00a0 The kind of angry that gives you confidence to know you are about to destroy a workout.\u00a0 The kind of anger that fuels you.\u00a0 Now that I have failed before, I am not afraid to do it again.\u00a0 If I had to do it a million times over I would, and guess what?\u00a0 I probably will, and that is okay.\u00a0 <strong>I will keep failing forward.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fear can lead you to believe crazy things.\u00a0 Like when Shain is out of town, I pretty much convince myself every night that I am about to be murdered.\u00a0 But I am not talking about that kind of fear, I am talking about the fear of failure, fear of not being good enough&#8230;. which can also be crippling. I used to be afraid of failure.\u00a0 I used to be afraid of disappointing other people, of embarrassing myself.\u00a0 This fear caused me to second guess all of my abilities.\u00a0 In college, no matter how hard I worked in the off season or how well practices went&#8230;fear of messing up a play would cripple me in games.\u00a0 It has been something I have struggled with in all areas of my life for as long as I can remember.\u00a0 I feel it before every race I am trying to hit a PR and going into almost every single tough workout.\u00a0 I feel it when trying to prove myself at work. But guess what happened last year? I failed.\u00a0 I missed my BQ time not once but&#8230;twice.\u00a0 I failed at something I worked really hard for and thought for sure I had in the bag.\u00a0 And I failed in front of everybody.\u00a0 It was painful and it was embarrassing.\u00a0 But despite all that, it wasn&#8217;t THAT bad.\u00a0 I missed my time?\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 Is my life over?\u00a0 Did all my friends and family dis-own me? Did I lose my job?\u00a0 Did my life fall apart? Of course not.\u00a0 Sometimes we chalk up failure to be this big scary thing in our mind, when really it is a necessity to move forward.\u00a0 Failure is not a bad thing. It took my body over two months to recover from doing two marathons in a month.\u00a0 Every single workout (even going on the stupid elliptical)\u00a0 just felt plain awful.\u00a0 I thought I may never get back to where I was, because not only was my body hurt but my confidence was also wounded.\u00a0 But I kept plugging away. Who is afraid of running in a polar vortex?\u00a0 NOT US! Within the last month I have felt my strength and speed gaining momentum.\u00a0 I now have this weird new attitude going into my workouts.\u00a0 Usually, going into a race or a tough lift I think to myself&#8230; &#8220;Okay, I guess we will see how this goes.&#8221;\u00a0 What a terrible way to go into something!\u00a0 Now I go in with confidence.\u00a0 No second thoughts.\u00a0 \u00a0 I am not afraid anymore.\u00a0 I am angry.\u00a0 The kind of angry that gives you confidence to know you are about to destroy a workout.\u00a0 The kind of anger that fuels you.\u00a0 Now that I have failed before, I am not afraid to do it again.\u00a0 If I had to do it a million times over I would, and guess what?\u00a0 I probably will, and that is okay.\u00a0 I will keep failing forward. &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}