The Baack Paack

I was recently struck by a comment that I overheard from a discussion going on next to me from a meeting I was attending the other night.  The speaker mentioned something to the effect of “I keep failing in my diet, I will always be this way”.   Hearing this, I tucked that discussion away in my memory and continued on with the meeting that I was attending, knowing that at some point I wanted to dive deeper into that thought process and talk about failing.

We are taught at a young age that failing is bad.  As parents, people do all kinds of crazy activities with their children to keep them from failing, from extra courses, to specialized teachers, to assessment testing, to sending them to different schools.  Yet we celebrate when this same child says their first word or stands up and walks, or rides a bike for the first time.

How did this child learn to walk, talk or ride? By failing hundreds of times.

How did this child learn to speak?  By failing hundreds of times.

How did this child learn to ice skate?   By failing hundreds of times.

How did this child lean to shoot a basketball..

Say it with me:

 

“By failing hundreds of times”.

 

 

In my mind, the act of failing is just as important as the act of accomplishment.  You cannot have one without the other.  As a society, we shun failure yet expect accomplishment.   We take this view and apply it to all things from driving a car to managing our checkbooks.  We expect perfection in the things that we do, our children, or coworkers and how we live our lives.   Now, let me be clear, I am NOT condoning lack of effort to meet expectations.  I am not giving you a free pass in life to not be successful.  Can I really be expected to learn a new language in a day?  No.  A month, probably not.  Three months?  I might have a basic level of understanding.  However, the process of learning this language is wrought with failure.  Mispronounced words, misspelled words, the usage of the wrong tense -all happen when one starts to learn a new language.  At the same time I am expecting that with failure comes the expectation to do better.  To complete the task, move forward, to get back on track towards your goals and dreams.

In the case of a student shooting the basketball, he has a goal and purpose as to why he is playing basketball.  He wants to put the ball in the hoop. So over and over for hours he throws the ball at the hoop with little success. The next day he watches a video or reads a book or watches someone who has played basketball and mimics their form.  He starts to see success.  It is sporadic at first and requires a lot of effort, both mentally and physically, but slowly the ball starts to go through the hoop more often.  Soon, he starts to get farther from the basket and starts to miss shots again (failing) and needs to reassess how he is shooting to make the shots at the further distance.  With each decision to move father from the hoop, he needed to change technique and evaluate several aspects of the shot.  The amount of spin on the ball, the amount of height in the jump, the release and follow through by his shooting hand, how much pressure from his arms – all of these decisions in a split second, so a ball can pass through the metal rim.

 

There is a population out there that would never pick up the basketball to start with.  They have “failed” in so many other athletic pursuits that they do not have the confidence in themselves to go through the process of failing yet another sport.  The fear of failure has crushed positive thoughts and the possibility of success, often carrying over to others aspects of their lives.

We also see this a lot in people that are on a self improvement program, whether it be working out or trying to lose body fat.   They have tried this workout, that workout, the late-night-3AM-infomercial-workout, and countless other plans.  Then at some point, something happens, and in their mind they “fail” and they stop.  The same approach is taken with a new eating plan.  You start full steam ahead, fill the fridge with clean foods, toss out the bad, and try to adapt to this new style of eating for 2, 3 weeks.  Then you spy the brownie plate and work, and you might as well have unleashed the Hulk inside you.  You devour that plate, or take several and sneak eat them.  Ten minutes later you are emotionally crushed.  You tell yourself you ‘Failed’.

“How come I keep FAILING to stay on track!  Dammit Genie and your freaking brownies!  Don’t you know those are my favorite, and I can’t eat them!  Oh well, I guess I might as well just go back to how I was eating before, I obviously can’t keep up with this new change..”

Sound familiar?

So, how does one overcome the negative connotation of failing and turn it into a positive?

I call it the Freedom from FEAR model.  This model can be applied to anything  as a process to learn and overcome a failure, to turn it into an accomplishment.

F ail – You attempt something new (or repeated some old behavior) and do not complete it to the expectation that you have set for yourself, and therefore ‘fail’.

 

E valuate – Evaluate the situation – What needs to change in order for me to accomplish what I am attempting?  Is this an environmental issue or a physical issue?  Is the undertaking too big at this moment?  Have I not planned properly? Is this a:

“I am eating because I am bored/stressed” (mental / emotional issue)

or is this a:

“I keep missing three point shots, I need to get closer to the rim”  (physical) type of issue?

 

A dapt – Take your information gained from the Evaluation step and adapt the process.  In the case of shooting basketballs, maybe more loft on the ball, or a higher arch, more spin or – move closer to the hoop.  The goal being to change the process slightly.  Was it not Albert Einstein who said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” We need to apply this thinking to our own processes.  If we start on a new eating plan and keep ‘failing’ every three weeks, or eat total garbage every Friday, what can we adapt to change this?  Yeah, you REALLY have to think about this.  You can’t just dismiss it as an unconquerable obstacle.  Change is hard.  Learning from your weaknesses and applying a new approach is even harder.  Take a moment and really think about what you need to change in order to get to this next step, and make a plan.

 

R etry – Try again with the new adapted process.  Measure your rate of success – and if not to your satisfaction, start the FEAR model over again.  There is not only ONE way to do something.  If you are following a running program in order to run your first 10K and by the fifth day your feet are sore or your motivation is lacking, MIX IT UP.   Go for a bike ride, or walk twice the distance, or swim.  Find a way to adapt and retry to get past your current failure point.  If you are on a new eating plan and you find yourself circling the kitchen over and over again, recognizing that you are close to that “failure point” from binge or boredom eating, adapt and retry!  Go for a walk, make a long distance phone call to a friend, get in the car and go get a cup of coffee.. do something to break the failure cycle.

Think about any professional sport that you watch on TV.   Why do some people watch NASCAR?  Just to see the failures – the crashes!   Think about professional football or baseball, the missed tackles, the miss catches and the multiple failures that happen each and every weekend.. and this their JOB as professional athletes!  This is what they “do” to bring home a paycheck, and even they fail.  Heck, looking in the large picture, one whole team fails to win each and every weekend, as there is only one winning team per match.

 

In my Spartan obstacle course racing there is a penalty for failing an obstacle.  You have to do 30 burpees for each failed obstacle..  Can’t climb the rope?  30 burpees, fall off the Z wall, 30 burpess.  Last year I failed so many times I ended up doing over 100 penalty burpees per race.  Did those failures stop me?  No, they pushed me harder to get better at the obstacles that I knew I would be facing. The actual failure was a single minor setback during the entire life of the race.  It wasn’t a large enough failure that at mile 4.5 during a 9 mile race I flll off the Z wall and throw my hands up and decry, “That’s it.. I am done, I failed!” That would have been foolish.

No, it was a setback. I paid the penalty, readjusted my race and moved forward on the course.

 

Yeah Jay, but I am talking about my diet.  I keep failing to stick with it.

 

Correct.  You do.  You just admitted to me that you have failed multiple times in the past and have given up.
Guess what.  YOU ARE HUMAN – get over it.   Superman has the red cape, and last time I checked, you were not wearing it.  In life you are going to fail, it is the only way you get to succeed.

I watched the fail cycle unfold in front of me in my own life. I would go gang busters for 3 weeks on a new eating plan, not see the change that I wanted, and stop stone cold.  I have seen this behavior in other as well.  I wish I knew then is what I know now, I should have applied the Freedom from FEAR model.

When you tell me you have failed, the questions I would ask you is:

• What worked and what didn’t?
• How can you adapt and change the elements that didn’t work?
• What could you have done differently?
• Different food choices, different amounts, different exercises?  List them out, analyze them, and apply them in a different way to move forward.

Too many of us get locked into one way of thinking, locked into there is only one solution to the problem, and if we can’t make or meet that solution, then we have failed.

In math, that might be the case, there is only one right answer.  However, we are blessed to live in a world with options. I am here to tell you that you have a lot of alternatives and possible solutions to your eating plan.  If you are failing your diet, list out the failure points and address them.

• What is causing the failure?
• What can I do to change this?
• What steps do I need to change in order to get moving forward again?

 

 

Embrace the Freedom from FEAR model and keep going.  Success is not a straight line and not something we all can achieve overnight.  It takes work, effort, evaluation and adaptation.  Recognize this and adjust your course.

YOU started your new journey for a reason.  Don’t let one minor setback derail you from your progress, and don’t let FEAR dictate your success.