Trouble Is Good For Us
Really, it is! What does not kill us, makes us stronger. Trouble and struggle teaches us every single thing we learn in life. Not a single person has ever started to walk without first falling down – repeatedly – while learning the process of balance in motion. If anyone tries to interfere with this process by preventing a fall, any decent parent will stop them. We seem to know on a deeply instinctive level that falling is good, it is how a child learns to walk. The only exceptions we make are for actual hazards they are not yet equipped to deal with.
Somewhere along the way, we lose that critical understanding, both for ourselves and others. Trouble is good; failing is good. We learn by getting back up and doing it again. No one ever succeeded in business without first failing in business. No one ever succeeded as a writer without first failing as a writer, often as in – want to sink into the ground and never see another keyboard for the rest of my life- fail. That failure isn’t bad – it’s important and magnificent.
Failure tests our resolve, it forces us to gain skill. In short, it makes us stronger. Each challenge we face in life make us grow. Whether it’s outside trouble, like accident or illness, or something we directly caused ourselves by our actions, we need to learn from it and grow stronger. We should not ever, not even once, make excuses for failure (though I know we all do, myself included). As soon as we make an excuse, we absolve ourselves of any responsibility to learn and grow from an event. That excuse will either cause it to hang out in our thoughts forever or, in the case of our mistakes, be repeated till we finally figure it out. Sometimes it will do both. The same holds true for making excuses for the failures of others, particularly our children. We need to be supportive when someone fails, not make excuses that will weaken them.
Should we then glory in failure? No, not for it’s own sake, but we do need to appreciate it as part of the process of success. Success isn’t the end result of achieving a specific goal, but the entire journey to get there. Trouble, challenges and failure are with us every step of the way. In part, they are the guides that get us where we want to go, course corrections to keep us on track.
The next time you fail at something, remember the toddler learning to walk. Sometimes they fall and skin their knee or bump their nose, but they get right back up and keep at it till they’re running across the yard. If you keep getting back up, you too will learn and be running after a while.
