Motivation

Do Not Let Failures Stem From Laziness

By  | 

It’s easy to take too much credit for success in life just like it’s easy to take too much responsibility for failure. Even when, objectively speaking, we’ve done everything we possibly could to bring about the desired result, when we’ve put everything we have into our endeavor, we might come up short due to myriad external variables just like even when, objectively speaking, we’ve done very little to bring about the desired result, when we’ve put very little into our endeavor, we might get what we want due to myriad external variables.

There are many, many things we can’t control, including our own natural abilities, but what we certainly can control is our effort and as we’ve written before accurately measuring effort is how we have to decide whether the endeavor was a success or a failure from the existential perspective. Success is confronting the challenge at peak sustainable output while failure is relying on this or that rationalization to confront the challenge at a much lower, much easier output.

As we move through life we shouldn’t be afraid of failure because if we have the courage to step outside of our comfort cocoons we’re guaranteed to experience it many times no matter how hard we try. But we should be afraid of complacency, of telling ourselves we want something but then not being willing to try really hard to get it. We should not let our failures stem from laziness. When we know we gave everything we had we’ll be secure in our own sense of accomplishment, regardless of the outcome, and we’ll put ourselves in position to apply that same mentality to subsequent challenges, which will of course make their likelihood of success increase exponentially.