07/02/2024
“Get back up on that horse!”
Raise your hand if you’ve heard that saying. 🖐🏾🖐🏿🖐🏽🖐🏼🖐🏻🖐️
Can I tell you it took me DECADES to figure out HOW to do that?
Really! It got to the point I’d feel embarrassed at how bad I was at recovering 🥴
It started in one of my first Church Christmas Pageants as a kid. The entire Sunday School was singing a Christmas Hymn up in front of everyone.
And I came in early.
My parents had an ancient video tape of this. Remember, it’s probably 1983 or so? So this was full-on VHS.
And you can see the look of horror on my face as I realize what I’ve done. I probably only sang 2 notes before realizing my mistake.
But I didn’t sing any of the rest of the song. Just stood there like a preschool statue with wide eyes.
Since then, I’ve failed at all sorts of things.
I’ve tried to bake a specific lemon layer cake at least 4 times and it’s been utter, crushing failure each time.
But I still bake.
I was at the finish line of finishing college…and seminary…and both times, let myself get derailed.
But I did finish college and hopefully seminary in the next few years.
So eventually I learned that the way I can take certain failures in stride and don’t see them as a threat to myself.
THEN I learned to apply that to everything. Especially anything around earning money.
My first business failure was maybe 9 years after the Christmas Hymn debacle. (Hey, I started young 😃) But that lawn care business wasn’t in the cards for me.
And there were several failures at starting businesses, growing businesses, being in business for myself, working for others. My resume probably has 30+ job titles on it.
But…
What held me back before with my income-generating failures was that I took them to heart. In a way that baking or academic failures rarely stopped me. So I looked at how I felt about those non-crushing failures and what I did after.
I learned that I bounce back quickly when I EMBRACE that I MUST get my repetitions in.
A screwed up meal? I could examine what happened and fix it for next time.
A screwed up school report? Stakes felt a little higher, but I can still examine what I did and modify it for next time.
It took me a while to learn I could do that at work and in my own business.
IT’S ALL JUST DATA. I’m still a Beloved Child of God even when my plans don’t work the way I’m hoping. But even with generating income and figuring how to do that and do it repeatedly and do it in new ways and scale how I’m doing it?
IT’S STILL ALL JUST DATA.
Not as tasty as a slightly dry cake. But still data. I can examine what didn’t work, keep what did, and use that for the next attempt.
So what have you failed at recently?
