Understanding and overcoming failure

You only fail when you fail to get up after you fall. We are all familiar with this strong and common quote. We come across failure at some point in our lives and it is impossible to not face it, especially in Parkour. Some people limit their progression because they are scared of failure. They simply don't try a jump because they are afraid to fall. They always think about the consequences of failure. There are so many excuses a person can find in order to not try something new and progress - fear of getting hurt, fear of embarrassing yourself and fear of losing what we already know to name a few. Some do try, but when they face failure after a few attempts, they accept defeat and give up. And the worst part about failure is that it leaves a mark. It becomes a frightful experience and the fear of it paralyses us and makes us unable to try again.

So how can you overcome fear and achieve your goal if you let it slow your progression down or even stop you from trying again? After working so hard to achieve your goal, if you come face to face with your fear, what do you do? Do you stop? Or do you work towards overcoming it?

The reason why many people don't progress after a point is because they get tired of failing after making several attempts. They even start believing that the saying 'try and try until you succeed’ is exaggerated and the one who came up with it didn’t know what it feels like to fail.

That's precisely where the problem starts. They fail to understand that simply trying and trying harder every time leads us nowhere. One must have the passion and desire to achieve what they want. They must be ready to put in more hard work to achieve it and  understand what exactly made them fail and work towards correcting it or getting better at it.

I want to narrate a small incident that happened to me recently. At the park where I usually train, I saw  a few small round tables and I decided to do a Kong vault on one table and Side Roll on the one next to it. I asked one of my student's to shoot a video of me doing those movements. I was over confident that those two movements were quite simple and that I would be able to do them with no trouble. When I attempted them, I couldn't roll on the second table properly and I kept falling down. After so many attempts I got too frustrated and started making mistakes and injured myself.

The fear of getting injured made me stop trying. This fear and overconfidence didn't even allow me to ask myself,”why am not able to roll properly?” and “where am I doing the mistake?”. I accepted failure by convincing myself that the table was too low for me to roll and that's why I was falling.

But the guy who was filming me focused on my mistake and he came to me and said “Anna (brother), you're jumping up and out after the Kong vault and that's why you're not able to roll. Try to roll on the bench without jumping. I think you'll get it.” I did it as he said and I was able to land properly, which made me realise that I had failed to focus on my mistake and I was trying over and over  again without really understanding what had to be done to achieve it.

I face failure every single day during my training and it teaches me a new lesson every time.

So guys, never give up and keep trying till you succeed, but also remember to focus on your mistakes and work towards correcting them. Don't let the fear stop you from moving forward or from achieving your goals.

It takes time to understand what Parkour has to teach but with patience, a lot can be learnt.

Parkourpaiyan