Achieving Greatness

I said this to one of my swimmers a couple of weeks ago and for some reason, it has stuck in my mind and will not leave me. It's like it has been haunting me.

Sometimes you need to fail to achieve greatness.

I never thought something that I randomly came up with on the spot, or at least something that I think I came up with randomly, could have such a great impact on me and my swimmer. When I told my swimmer that, he just said, "Wow! That's something that I really needed to hear." He was having a hard week and wasn't doing as well as he would have liked. I took him aside and talked to him for a bit and then told him that. Throughout the rest of the week, even though he still wasn't doing very well, he had a positive attitude and he tried his best to do the sets that I gave him. He did not make the sets, but he tried. Then these past couple of weeks, he did really well and made every single set that I gave him. If he would have given up after a couple of failures, he would not have known the sweetness of his success and the joy that comes from it.

I feel like this has a lot of parallels in my life. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I have also not been the best of people at times, but I always learn from my mistakes. I feel like it is necessary to make mistakes in this life because we learn from them. I know that this may sound like I'm preaching to the choir or something, but this is something that I struggle with and need to realize more often. I am a perfectionist and I tend to need to have everything perfect. I do not let go of failures easily and they usually affect me for a very long time. I need to take my own advice and realize that I sometimes need to fail because I can learn so much more out of failures than out of success. Don't get me wrong, you learn things from success too, but failure usually seems to strike you to the core and teach you in so many ways.

Failing too often can also make you give up. I have never had this problem, but I know some of you have this problem. All that I can say is don't give up. Failure is just a part of greatness. It is something that we all have to go through. Everybody makes mistakes and fails at life. It's what you do after the mistakes and failures and how you handle the situation that makes you who you are. You may feel like crap because you feel like you have failed or made a mistake. If you hide under a rock, you will learn nothing and you will not grow. That doesn't make you any better as a person--it makes you worse. If you take your failure or mistake as a challenge to better next time, you will grow and learn from the situation and it makes you a better person.

Remember that sometimes you need to fail to achieve greatness.