Do You Own Your Failures More Than Your Successes?

When I was living in Portland, I decided to go through training to climb Mt. Hood. On one particular day, I was fifty or so flights of stairs into my workout. With only eight weeks of training left, I was having my doubts. I’d not lost the weight I thought I’d lose, to be honest.

That happened when I trained to ride my bike across the country, too, and everything turned out fine. And yet I worried. What if I didn’t make it? I started feeling defeated, even with plenty of time left to train.

I began to wonder if I had what it took.

But I reasoned with myself. I thought about all that I’d done before, and reminded myself that I had, indeed, ridden a bike across America. Yeah, but, I thought to myself, that doesn’t count.

*Photo Credit: knehcsg, Creative Commons

No kidding. That is what I actually thought. I had to stop for a minute. Now the truth is, I really did ride my bike across America. I rode around 3,000 miles in one summer (you can actually cross in less, but our team took a southern route, then turned north to add some miles for reasons I’ll never understand).

That’s when I realized, I don’t own my successes.

So I kept climbing the stairs, and began to reflect on the idea that I would readily accept a failure, even meditate on it, but I wouldn’t accept an accomplishment.

There’s nothing healthy about that. The truth is, we operate out of who we believe we are. And God needs us to be strong, because there is important work to be done.

God isn’t served when we can’t own our own accomplishments.

He doesn’t want us arrogant.

But He does want us confident. God has delivered us in the past (in partnership with our actions) and He can do so again.

I made a mental list of all my accomplishments. I thought about them as I climbed the stairs that day, and have come back to them since. I want to learn to own them, so I’ll be prepared the next time I’m challenged, so I won’t be burdened by doubt.

My question to you is:

Do you own your accomplishments?

Do you own your failures? And if you own your failures, and not your accomplishments, why? Does God want you to disregard the memory of the things you’ve done well?

I don’t think He does.

Would you mind doing something for me today? Would you pull out a sheet of paper, or open your journal, and list your accomplishments? Just keep a running list, all day. I think you’d be surprised at who you really are. I think you’d be surprised at what God could possibly call on you to accomplish.

Do You Own Your Failures More Than Your Successes? is a post from: Storyline Blog