Lesson #3 Success/Failure

My latest lesson I have learnt is that success or failure can only be determined by ourselves. I cannot tell someone if they have succeeded or failed in something and likewise someone else can't tell me if I have succeeded or failed. Now of course we do tell other people if we think they have achieved, we may think or even tell if we believe someone has failed. As encouragement people will tell us when they believe we have succeeded. That is nice and it is encouraging. What I have realised though is what really counts is if we, ourselves believe we have succeeded or failed. 

I realised last night that it is determined by our own goal posts to measure success and how we measure failure. We choose to view something as a failure or not. I have just gone through about 18 hours where I thought I had failed in a big way on something that became an incidental part of my ironman journey. I was a mess and I couldn't seem to shake it. Then it hit me. I decide what failure is to me (later I realised it is exactly the same for success). People around me were saying I haven't failed at all but it didn't make any difference until I changed the way I saw the situation. I am very appreciative of the support I got from those that knew what was going on but it didn't change anything until my own thinking about my success or failure changed. 

Failure is viewed as not getting something right. I teach my students that mistakes are good because it brings us closer to knowing how to do something. 

I needed to change my thinking from thinking I'd failed at being strong enough to overcome something and instead see that I am still on a learning curve in that area. 

With my readjusted perspective on this and readjustment that I am still doing an ironman race and therefor need the same focus and motivation, I begin my final week to ironman. 

Let's get this party started!!