Keep on Trying

Happy New Year, readers!

I like themes so I'm going to continue with my karate dojo's creeds.  And this one is timely for anyone with a New Year's Resolution!  The next one is for our Orange belt rank.  The creed is below:

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed.  And the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying!

- Tom Hopkins

Failure is the road to success.  I've written about this many times and so have all sorts of professional writers, industry leaders, self-help advocates, etc.  We learn in moments of failure.  We gain momentum in moments of success.  But how?  Well, sometimes we fail because we lack experience or necessary skill.  Through practice and preparation in a consequence-free environment, we can gain the experience and skill to succeed.  When showtime comes, we are ready to perform.  Other times, we may be successful in an overall capacity, but there is room to improve, or smaller areas where we failed to hit the mark.  This requires evaluation to see the areas to improve.  Self-evaluation may not be enough to catch all the errors.  A second or third set of eyes can give you new perspective.  Game-tape can be crucial for evaluating, because then we are not relying on memory or interpretation.  

Now, we understand how to achieve success learning from failure.  Let us better understand what this creed is saying about success and failure.  It starts off with "I am not judged..."  The fastest way to quitting on a learning enterprise is to compare yourself to others, because there is always going to be someone better to put yourself down.  It is demotivating.  Instead, we should always compare ourselves to our self from the previous day or week.   Focusing on our own progress is a great measure of success while building confidence and momentum.  Progress is also about failure, where you have to understand where the starting place compared to the current place is to know when you have achieved a level of success.  My dojo takes the same approach, focusing on progress, consistency, and effort for considerations towards rank elevation.  Perfection is never required.  These considerations get tighter the higher one ranks, but the instructors and leaders of the dojo would never judge one person against another for rank.

The last three words, "Keep on trying!" ties the creed together.  This isn't the same try as Yoda refers to in "Do or do not... there is no try," or Mr. Miyagi's "Karate guess so" grape analogy.   This try is about persistence, because success, failure, and progress are all part of the process of never giving up.  Persistence to achieve your goal is a requirement to succeeding.  Without persistence, you give up when you meet failure.  Without persistence, you won't keep practicing and you won't keep making progress. 

Failure is inevitable.  It is what you do after that matters.  To be successful, we get back up, we learn from to failure, and most importantly, we keep on trying.  With persistence, progress is inevitable.  With persistence, success is only a matter of time.  I like the way Captain Jason Nesmith from Galaxy Quest says it: "Never give up, never surrender."