Learning to fail.

SOURCE: http://fumaga.com/6535

I have to keep reminding myself that life is a process that is meant to be enjoyed. It's a journey that never really ends until we die. Yet rather then enjoying each accomplishment I achieve, no matter how big or small, I have a tendency to always want more.

I suppose this is good in that it drives me to want to be better, yet in the same breath it hinders me from really enjoying and appreciating what I have right now.

In the last year I have become fixated on becoming healthy; I'm going to the gym and working out with a trainer and I'm trying to learn how to eat properly. I get frustrated easily, because although eating is a fundamental part of life, I have a very minuscule grasp on how to eat in a way that is both enjoyable and healthy. Those two words never seemed synonymous before.

Lord help me, I am trying.

One of my biggest problems is that I compare myself to other people. I have this terrible tendency to turn everything into a race or competition, rather then enjoying the efforts of my hard work. I feel the need to just be better then everyone all the time. This is a recipe for disaster that usually ends up making me feel terrible about myself when the other person is better then me at something.

Competition is good when you know how to be a good loser. It's good if you can take a loss and appreciate the effort you put into it. It's good if you can use it as a way to learn how to be better.

I don't know how to do any of that. When I compete and I lose I feel like I failed. That's it.

The other day I was on the treadmill and I noticed the person next to me was running way faster, so I turned up the speed and started an invisible race. I went faster than my normal pace, the one that I have spent the last year working up to, and it threw me off because I couldn't keep up.

I lost a race the other person didn't even know we were having. I lost a race to a person who is a faster runner then me, and perhaps someone who has been running for a number of years, or just someone who is simply a better runner... I don't know. All I know is that I turned something into a competition that I wasn't able or willing to fail at and it felt shitty.

If you take failure in stride and really learn to appreciate it as a way to be better, then I guess you really didn't fail. Unfortunately, I didn't do that the other day. I guess understanding that now, in hindsight, is better late then never.

Being "healthy" is something I am never going to master. It's not something that I will wake up one day and say to myself "Well, I've achieved everything I've set out to do, so I can stop now." It doesn't work that way. There will always be things that I need to learn and master, and there will always be people who are faster, stronger, thinner and healthier then me, but one thing I know for certain is that I am already better then I was yesterday.

Time to kill it at the gym with Jordan.