Chasing FailureSample

If At First You Don't Fail, Try Again

In order to succeed we can’t be afraid to keep taking risks. When you do succeed, the temptation is to protect what you’ve gained and stop taking risks. Success can actually have a way of making us even more afraid to fail. When you succeed, there are three types of risk I want to encourage you to continue taking: strategic risks, financial risks, and people risks.

Strategic risks keep the future in view. Does what you want to accomplish take into account where culture is or where culture is going? Change is difficult for a lot of people, but it’s necessary. It’s always going to be difficult to reach new goals with old habits. Rather than resting on past success, we have to be willing to take some limited strategic risks and try new approaches, if we want to set ourselves up for more success in the future. If you get good at what you want to accomplish, remain flexible on how you can do it better.

Taking financial risk means setting aside a portion of your budget to investigate ideas. While many of your pursuits may end in failure, what you learn along the way has value and can make you better at reaching your dreams. As you spend on exploring, listen to where God is leading you, learn the lessons along the way, and your efforts will pay off. You may need to invest in a mentor who can come alongside you and challenge your own status quo. Success can make you comfortable and lazy. Invest in pushing yourself and others.

If you succeed, invest in other people—especially the up-and-coming. You can give them the benefit of your experience, the head start you never got. People who are following after you need to learn hard lessons, but they don’t have to be the same lessons you learned. You worked hard so they could have tall shoulders to stand on. Your risks on people may fail miserably, but continue to believe the best in people. Watch and see what God can do with your willingness to risk on behalf of others. If there’s someone in your world you’ve counted out, maybe you should count them in. Give them the opportunity you wished you’d had sooner. 

Once you have the framework for realizing what dreams to pursue and the game plan to start working toward your aspirations, you, my friend, are ready to start chasing failure. Stand on the foundation that God is bigger than whatever the world throws at you, and He wants you to pursue His best for you. In the process, you’ll find successes, you’ll find innovations, you’ll find fulfillment, you’ll find challenges. You’ll find friendships. And you’ll find your dreams evolving. You just never know where taking risks and leaning into failure might take you. Your dreams are worth chasing. And yes, you will experience failure along the way, but that has to stop being a deal breaker. Chase it down, look failure in the eye, greet it, if you are feeling friendly, and befriend it. Let failure remind you that you are getting closer and closer every day to achieving what you once thought was impossible.

Respond

How do you look forward when you experience success? 

What risks are you willing to take to pursue your dreams? Who can give you sound, godly advice as you move forward?

Who can benefit from your journey chasing failure, and how can you encourage them to trust God along the way?