Failure. There’s a lot of negativity surrounding that word and for good reason, it doesn’t feel very nice to fail. When you fail to lose weight, fail to wake up when you need to, fail to get to work on time, fail to give up that bad habit, fail to keep a promise; it can feel crushing, it can make you feel like you’re not good enough for anything, so why bother even trying? The thing is, if you fail at something, it means you actually tried to do something. Failure requires some sort of effort, some sort of action. Failure can teach you many things if you let it. Examine your failures to see what went wrong. When did things start going south? Why did it turn out like it did? 

If you want to find success in anything, you have to be willing to fail. Failure is part of the path to success. I used to be obese and successfully got my weight down to a healthy one. What people don’t see is the many failures to lose weight in my past. I tried to get healthy many times before I successfully did so. One of the key things that helped me was finding out exactly how many calories I was eating. The other key thing was discovering that I was considered obese. It didn’t feel good, but it was the truth.

People around me to this day deny that I was obese. That’s because our perception of what is obese is heavily (haha) skewed. Obese isn’t the same as morbidly obese, which is what people think of. But just being obese is when all the health risks start. I’m going to be brutally honest here: if you are overweight or obese, it’s because you are eating too much. It doesn’t have to be a lot; a little extra over a long period of time adds up. People don’t get obese overnight and they won’t lose all that weight overnight. You don’t have ‘fat genes’ and your cousin doesn’t have ‘skinny genes’. It doesn’t work like that. Are you the same height? Are you the same gender? Calorie needs vary based on many factors. You may think you eat the same thing as your skinnier relative, but do you follow them around every hour of the day to determine how much they actually eat overall? Do you follow them to see how much they move and exercise compared to you?  It won’t be the same as you. It’s physically impossible.

If you are failing at something, like losing weight, you need to challenge the way you’re trying to succeed at it. Look at it from a different angle. With losing weight, are you tracking what you eat? Or are you under the impression that as long as you do a workout, you can eat anything you want? I believed this for a long time. The truth is, you don’t burn all that much during a workout, even an intense one. It’s really easy to eat back 400 calories. Do you believe that as long as you eat ‘healthy’, you can eat however much you want? Peanut butter is pretty healthy, but also very calorie dense; it’s very easy to overeat. I wish it weren’t so, because I love peanut butter.

Failure is inevitable. If you’ve never failed, then you’ve never tried anything worthwhile. Do you want a fulfilling relationship? It probably won’t happen on the first try. Do you want to learn how to dance? You’re not going to get the steps right away. Do you want to wake up early? You’ll probably hit the snooze at first. Changing your behavior is one of the most difficult things you can do, but it’s not impossible and you shouldn’t give up when failure rears its head. Failure is a chance to learn, to grow.

This isn’t meant to be discouraging, I just want you to know what to expect, to know it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to be wrong. It means you’re trying something worthwhile. Failure will happen, but you can’t let that stop you from trying again. That’s the most important thing. Don’t let failure stop you from trying again. Maybe don’t try the exact same thing again, but don’t let it stop you completely. Figure out what you can do better. Always examine your failures. Sometimes part of the failure is outside your control, but always look at what you have control over. What can you improve next time? What was within your control?

What’s one failure you can examine right now? You just might learn how to succeed next time.