I have failed at many things in my life. More than I can recount for sure. As a young kid I wanted nothing more than to play in the NFL, well that didn't happen. But did I do everything I could have to get there, I can't really say YES.
You see I use this example to show that sometimes failure can't be avoided and sometimes it can. To me it was a failure because I didn't spend every waking moment dedicating myself to that goal. I had parties in high school, drank and didn't train like I really now know I should have. Yes some of this was ignorance but at this point in my life I realize that ignorance is an excuse because we can all find the information we need but it is a matter of how far we will go to get it.
In college I wasted a lot of time on chasing girls and being "sociable" which really just means going to parties that were moving me further from my goal not closer. Sure I lifted but was it really everything I had or 100% or the time, no. Now maybe you are reading this thinking "well maybe you just didn't have the genetics to make it to the NFL", that may be true, I'm not the best athlete around, but I'm solid.
But the problem is I don't know because after playing as a true freshman I decided to go skiing with some buddies from high school and I didn't know how to ski. I the hot rental chick I was an expert and she cranked my bindings so tight they wouldn't release. So when I fell on some moguls that I never should have been on in the first place, boom, there goes my knee 180 degrees the wrong way. On top of being a total pride filled idiot and saying I was an expert, we were doing a little drinking. I wasn't drunk by any means but I'm sure it didn't help my reaction time and therefore my situation. This is hard just to type that I was that stupid, careless, reckless and just wasn't keeping my goal that I had held since childhood as my #1 priority, instead of just impressing my friends.
When you give 100% and use every moment to push towards a goal, you may never reach that goal and that idea stops a lot of people from pushing 100% towards that goal. You hear these people all the time, "I could have done this or that, if I had wanted to". Bull fucking shit, you can't do anything that you have never done. Cause if you could do it, you would have already done it.
I admit I have been scared to give 100% for a long time and don't really know if I've ever given 100% to anything because of my fear of failure and/or more appropriately my overinflated sense of pride. Well fuck pride, I want to give 100% of my self to something and let the chips fall where they may.
I may not reach my goal but I feel like at this point in my life I have always been self destructive so that I couldn't fail, and I am sick of destroying my own dreams. I know this much, I am going to throw 100% of myself into something and if I don't reach my goals, for the first time in my life I will not fail,I will not be a failure, I will be the biggest success because I finally am growing the balls to let go of pride and take a chance on failing.
Failing doesn't make you a failure, failing to give everything you have and risk having to say "I gave it everything I had and I just couldn't do it" is what makes you a failure. Because taking on that commitment and that risk is the hardest thing in the world to me and something I've never attempted because I let pride interfere.
I will embrace failure if it comes at the price of 100% commitment and really it won't be a failure if I can truly say it was everything I had.