Issue #131

You Will Fail

Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave. — Mary Tyler Moore
An open journal for tracking habits on a desk, with a few missing entries.

The end of December is the time when we usually make New Year’s resolutions and set ambitious goals for the next 360 and something days.

It is particularly effective to do this at a moment that holds some kind of significance to us, be it a start of a year, a painful breakup, the death of a loved one, or anything in between.

I want to remind you that to achieve your goals, particularly the meaningful ones, you’ll have to sustain a lot of pain and hardship, endure difficult times, muster up a great deal of willpower and energy to continue despite all external and internal obstacles you’ll face.

And you’re likely to fail anyway, just as most of us. And that’s perfectly fine. When you fail, when you skip that weekly workout, daily blog post, or a meditation session, cut yourself some slack.

A slip up doesn’t mean anything if you pick yourself up and continue the next day. It’s better to work on your new habits the entire year with a day off here and there than every day for the first three weeks.

Achieving your goals will be difficult, challenging, and it will test your limits. And you’ll fail. Be ok with it, accept it, forgive yourself, and move on the next day anyway.

Zoran Jambor
Inspiration Bits


PS. This issue was inspired by an enthralling conversation with John Skoubourdis. If you have an idea for a topic that would be useful for you, hit reply and tell me about it. There are no bad ideas, and I’ll do my best to help you with anything you might find challenging or difficult.