Failure Is Part of Life – Embrace It

Failure is necessary for success.

I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s true.

Think about it, how often do you succeed at something on the first try?  Rarely.  In order to succeed, you need to fail forward, which means you need to learn from your failures.  Don’t waste your mistakes!

I can’t stress this enough.

Here is a story to illustrate, and hopefully give you some laughs too.

A couple of days ago, I was re-filming my elevator speech for Praxis.  Now, for those of you who act in films, you know that it’s not that easy.  For those of you who have NOT acted in a film before, it goes something like this:

Film a 10-second scene about 30 times, then film that exact same scene AGAIN from a different angle 30 MORE times, etc.  But as an actress, I greatly enjoy it so it’s not that bad 😉

Luckily, filming my elevator speech wasn’t quite as difficult since I only needed one angle and one scene.  Therefore, I proceeded to film, only to be unfortunately interrupted by my sister’s rooster and my inability to memorize my script (I had just written it).  So, I took my Praxis advisor’s advice and didn’t stop the film when I made a mistake, and later cut all of them out in my YouTube editor.

Naturally, I had a reel of mistakes leftover.  I thought it might be fun to compile them into a blooper reel… Well, I ended up publishing it, so I guess I ought to share it with you all here.

Before I do, however, I have a point to make:

First, don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself.  I’m working on this… It used to be really hard for me (and it still is sometimes)!  That’s part of the reason why I’m sharing this video.  It’s me being vulnerable, it shows what I’m like when I’m having fun, and it gives you an idea of my personality.

I might regret this…

Well, there you have it!  Note that the blooper reel is longer than my actual elevator speech:

This is another thing people don’t think about when they watch a film.  That final speech that took you 60 seconds to watch took me about 1 hour to film, and then another hour to edit.  That’s not an exaggeration.

In the same way, you will fail a lot more than you succeed.  Therefore, mathematically, this means that if you fail often enough, you will eventually succeed.  A lot of people give up too soon.  How tragic!  If that had only kept going, they might have succeeded.

You might be so close…don’t give up yet.  Learn from your mistakes, pick yourself up, and press on!

Embrace your failures – you’re one step closer to success.

 

Until next time,

Hope Frances