Each and every day, we experience failure.

It’s a fact of life. We can’t avoid it. We can’t always be successful.

Things go wrong and we will fail. Period.

Failing isn’t the issue at all, it’s what we do with our failure that counts. I’m finally coming to terms with this as I type this out. You see, I hate failing. Regardless of me knowing it will happen, I don’t like it.

Yes, I know we have to learn from our failures and all that good stuff, but sometimes we just don’t want to. It’s just easier to sulk and sidestep the issue at hand rather than dealing with things. But as I’ve come to learn, this is the exact opposite of what we should do.

About 4 months ago, I went on a 60 day weight loss challenge at my church. I was excited and pumped! I kept telling myself, “Caleb, this is it man! You’re finally going to get that six-pack you’ve always dreamed of!” I even posted a cute Facebook status to show off what I was going to do. I had read somewhere about making a public statement of your goals boosted your chance of success, so I figured it was worth a shot.

I quickly learned how meaningless my post was. Perhaps, I had hoped I would magically have the drive to eat better and work out when nothing at all had changed in my mind. I had set myself up for failure before I even started my challenge because I didn’t prepare myself properly.

It’s easy saying, “I’m going to change!” It’s hard actually doing it. As I’m sure you realized, I failed the 60 day challenge miserably. I didn’t drop one pound, didn’t gain any muscle, didn’t eat any better, didn’t work out. I didn’t do anything even remotely close to losing weight.

I’m pretty sure I actually gained some weight. And looking back, I’m not mad at myself for screwing up so bad. I’m mad because I didn’t learn from my failure, I sulked and made things worse. Rather than use the bad experience as a springboard to bigger and better things, I dug myself deeper into the hole.

I ate worse than I had in years. Picked up drinking cokes, wooo Texas! Did no working out. Put back on weight, I lost over a year ago.I spun out of control all because I let my failure get the best of me.

Any failure has the potential to cripple us if we let it, or it can take us places we’ve never been before. The only thing that matters when we fail is how we handle it. Thomas Edison gives us a beautiful example of how we should look at failure, “I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. We can learn a lot from this simple quote about dealing with failure.

1. Admit to yourself that what you are doing is not working. Edison didn’t give up after he failed to create a working light bulb on his first attempt. Rather, he moved on knowing that what he had just done wasn’t the right way to do it.
2. Figure out what you did wrong and what you did right.  Edison obviously made countless attempts before finally creating a winner. Undoubtedly, he went through each failure and prodded as to why it did not work.
3. Create a plan and try again. After discovering where he went wrong and right, Edison didn’t stop there. He put his new found knowledge to work and tried again.

Next time you fail, be more like Edison. Don’t give up after one try like me. Keep at it and keep improving with each and every attempt until finally you succeed.