In my most recent "Short Shot" blog post, I made a quick reference to something I wanted to expand on this posting, which is all about success.
The overarching concept of the article from which I'm drawing the information is that if you are doing these specific things then you will be a success at a given activity. In the words of the article, "Success isn't just about money, power, and fame. Personal fulfillment and making an impact count for something too. We collected a series of indicators that you're going to be more successful than you think. Those include being open to failure and making time every day to learn. If even a few of these signs sound familiar to you, you're making good progress."
Provocative and potentially click-bait titles aside, it is something I think could prove useful for every HEMA practitioner out there.
Enjoy!
As I was recently scrolling through a news app on my phone, I came across this article by Business Insider entitled "11 Signs You're Going to be Successful, Even If It Doesn't Feel Like It." I found the advice given in it to be quite interesting and something I thought could be easily applicable to what we do in HEMA.
Now, given the source of the article, it should be obvious (even if you don't follow the link) that success, in this case, refers specifically to success at business, and that typically has a fairly narrow definition. In business, one's success is typically measured by the bottom line, either of your division or your own business, or even sometimes by how much you personally earn. It could be measured by the number of acquisitions your business makes, how much territory it covers, its market share, whatever, but it typically boils down to money.
Things are not so black-and-white when it comes to HEMA. There is any number of ways in which we could personally define our success within the context of the branch of HEMA we study. Did you earn a medal at a tournament? That's a very clear example of success for some people, but let me suggest to you that it might equally be a success for another person to have just competed at all. Success is getting better at the art you study, it's honing in on one particular move that has been vexing you, it's teaching someone else to do something you cognitively grasp but can't quite physically pull off.
So as we go through the examples provided in the article and as I put my own personal spin on it, keep asking yourself how you can adapt this point to fit your definition of success. We all want to achieve different things in our beloved art, and what one considers success another might consider irrelevant while another considers it a bridge too far to even consider.
As I have mentioned several times by this point in numerous blog posts, I'm a psychotherapist, and one thing I always have to remind folks is that success cannot be viewed as an absolute, as a monolithic black-and-white block of either complete success or abject failure. Rather, it's infinite shades of gray along the way towards your definition of success. So take these suggestions and adapt them to fit your world and your HEMA, and remember that success is never a destination, but rather a journey that's well worth taking.
Innovation is very often one hallmark of a very successful business. To quote from the article, "John Sculley...said throughout his career he's always asked questions like, 'Why is it done this way?' He said success is largely about the willingness 'to solve a problem in a way that's never been solved before.'"
This puts HEMA in an interesting space, doesn't it? One on hand, innovation is not really what we're all about. Our job is to take something from a discreet period in time and reconstruct or recontextualize it as accurately as possible. From the perspective of the business world, we are intentionally solving problems the same way they always have been because that's what is historically valid.
Yet, on the other hand, we do always want to find better ways to do things that are still historically valid. It's certainly not uncommon for someone -- or even the HEMA community as a whole -- to accept a given interpretation as valid and accurate, only to later question that interpretation because a better and equally valid interpretation came along.
From this perspective, then, we are expressing exactly the same mindset as that suggested in the article. We see something that works and is good, yet still wonder if it might not be improved upon in some way. Perhaps it's only a slightly nuanced change, perhaps a slight alteration of sword angle or a minor shift in foot position, yet nonetheless there we are trying to find a better way to do it because that's what makes us better.
Then, of course, this can be taken as regarding overall improvement. Maybe the "better way to do things" isn't trying something different at all, but rather doing the same things as close to perfect as possible. We can all most likely easily identify what we're not doing so well, but as long as we are working towards improvement in a very deliberate way then we are already getting closer to success.
Remember that this article was written specifically for businesspeople in mind, but that it also reaches into the realm of overall healthy living. This is one of those meta indicators that suggests generally living a life well lived. Given that fact, this might initially seem a little too wide scope to be applicable to our HEMA work. However, I think we can apply this directly by asking if we have a vision for the kind of HEMA life we want.
By which I mean, do you know where you are going with this? Are you all in and dedicated to perfecting your art to the best of your ability, or is this just a fun hobby you do on the side along with several other hobbies? Is it your intent to become competitive and to make the tournament circuit, or are you happy to just hang with your club and spar sometimes? Do you want to focus on research, or poorly understood weapons system, or writing in general?
The point here is that it really doesn't matter what kind of HEMA life you want (remember how we said success will mean different things to different people?), but you need to know where you're going with things or else you will likely float in limbo. It's never so much the direction in which we choose to go, but rather that we are going in a direction of our own choosing and not just idly floating where chance and circumstance take us.
Choose the HEMA life you want, regardless of what that may be, and then assertively pursue that life to the best of your abilities. You will be happier in general and appreciate your HEMA work all the more.
The article defines this very succinctly: "Your signature strengths are simply the skills you're uniquely good at."
That's certainly simple enough and should seem pretty obvious in regards to an activity like HEMA that is composed of numerous little skills all coming together. However, for some reason, people have a bad habit of focusing on building up their deficits to the detriment of their strengths rather than focusing on what they already do well.
And please don't think I'm suggesting you not work to get better at your deficits. You clearly should, but not to the exclusion of your strengths. You might also have to accept that you may well never be very good at this or that, and so instead should rely on what works well for you.
To clarify, let's imagine a fighter has an absolute gift for making a fast and accurate thrust, one that easily allows him to get a hit regardless of what guard is being used. However, he isn't satisfied with the fact that his Zwerch is weak and sloppy, so when in a fight he often will use the Zwerch because he wants to have it tested rather than the thrust he naturally does so well. Consequently, he gets a great many hits to his head.
Note what you're already good at and make your fighting based around those rather than trying to shoehorn in skills that are not your best. Approaching your fighting like this will definitely help make you more successful at HEMA.
I don't know a single HEMA participant who hasn't dealt with failure of some kind. Whether in tournament or sparring, whether in taking up a new weapon or developing a class, we've all suffered the sting of failure.
Good. If you're afraid to fail that also means you're afraid to try new things, and until you can do that you will never grow as a fighter or as a person. As I said above, there is only ever so much "new" we can abide given the nature of HEMA, but that doesn't mean we can't intentionally step out of our comfort zone in other ways.
We can still do something new while maintaining historical validity, regardless of whether we fear failure or not. For instance, one thing I've definitely noted among new students is a fear of sparring, especially in front of others, for fear of failure. They fear failure while sparring, forgetting that the only way to not fail in the long run is to spar and just deal with the unavoidable failures in the short term. This is also true of trying new weapons or systems, and in numerous other ways that still allow us to honor the past.
Whatever way we chose to try new things, we have to remember that, despite what the movies say, failure is always an option!
Starting up in HEMA is something of a calculated risk to begin with, but it doesn't end there, because HEMA is, in a great many ways, about personal growth.
There are so many ways in which the practice of HEMA can encourage us to be more than we thought we could be, or do things we never thought possible. I've long felt that the best way to manage anxiety is to take up Longsword because once you realize you can handle a three-foot-long piece of steel coming at your head you start to feel are more empowered.
But once you're past that stage, every step forward could potentially be a calculated risk for you. Are you thinking about going to your first major tournament? Considering teaching your first class? Do you have a presentation you want to give at a conference? All of these things are examples of "calculated risk" within the confines of our HEMA work, and something that suggests you are working towards success.
There are certainly jerks in the HEMA community. However, this is a perfect example of how winning medals, or running large events, or running a successful club, or being known as an excellent whatever won't matter if your reputation as a jerk precedes you.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'm of the mind we should all be nice to everyone. But when viewed from this perspective of success you can certainly see where being nice does indeed pay off. This gets to the idea of networking, of having resources and supports you can call upon, even just of reaching out to bounce a question or an idea off someone. Also, it will be exceedingly hard to be part of any club if you are a jerk, regardless of whether you run the club or not. All of these things translate into a more complete understanding of things, which is certainly a metric by which we can measure success from the HEMA perspective.
Now, being "nice" doesn't mean that you agree with everyone. People can have wildly different interpretations of things, and just because you are nice doesn't mean you can't express your disagreement in a reasonable and respectful way. Also, HEMA is a wide swathe of people, and there are going to be loads of people with whom you disagree -- whether it's in politics, or faith, or life choices, whatever. We can disagree amicably and yet still be nice.
To quote the article, "Coles...said: 'The thing that I always try and say...is your peer group is really the most important influence on your life because you are going to rise and fall together...a group of you will start our together, and they sort of pull you with them.'"
So you can be anything you want, but still don't be a jerk.
This is the point I featured in the most recent "Short Shot" post. As I said in that original post, this is a valuable mindset when it comes to HEMA because it's so easy to get stuck in a rut.
Even with the confines of historical validity, we trap ourselves by always doing the same thing the same way even when it's never seemed to really work. Yet, because that's the way we were taught or what we were told is right that's the way we've always done it. But having a beginner's mind always us to escape the limits of our own paradigm for a moment, and in so doing open ourselves up to something truly wonderful and new.
This is something I think we all should do in the larger contexts of our lives. We need to exercise our mental "muscles" just as we do our physical ones, so every day we need to be reading, or talking about things with knowledgeable people, or learning new skills, or watching videos, or learning in whatever way seems best to us.
In our HEMA lives, this imperative only becomes all the more vital. It is quite literally our jobs within this context to learn something new every day. We can do this in the ways I mentioned above, but also by training with a mind towards learning something new about how we do something, or by recording our movements to dissect later. Whichever way we do it, it is an absolute must that we continue with our learning process and never assume we know there is everything there is to learn about our chosen art.
I am afraid all too often this is an aspect of HEMA that goes by the wayside. HEMA is not just the physical aspect, although that clearly is the ultimate expression of what we're doing. Without the learning aspect, however, we're just swinging swords and other weapons about willy-nilly. Without learning our sparring would very legitimately look like the worst Hollywood sword fight you can think of simply because there is no objective standard for what's right and wrong.
Learning is, compared to the excitement of fighting with Longsword, rapier, or saber, often overshadowed, yet it is no less important. And I would even go so far as to say those HEMA practitioners who are known mostly for their transcriptions, translations, and interpretations are no less magnificent as those who are known as known as amazing fighters.
As the article puts it, "You should be allotting some of your time to reading or research -- something that will expand your horizons." Be successful in HEMA, and never stop learning!
A vitally important quality in any context, in something like HEMA I feel it's even more so. Being self-aware is the quality that will allow you to recognize that perhaps a given technique is very weak and needs to be improved, or that perhaps you're not actually the best person to teach a certain class. Self-awareness in this context is the skill of knowing yourself as a HEMA practitioner, your strengths and weaknesses, and a willingness to evaluate those honestly.
This clearly also extends to your role as a teacher. You have to know what you do well and what you do not, and use that knowledge for the good of your students. If you are too full of yourself to admit that a given concept vexes you, then you will never be a terribly good teacher.
As the article says, "Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith...writes: 'If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world.'"
Again, this is an important quality in every context of life but certainly a must in HEMA.
Let's be honest, none of us have gotten here by ourselves. We've all either had instructors or club mates that have helped us reach whatever point we have. Even if, by a strange quirk of chance, you are fully self-trained and you have developed a high level of competency simply through your own native talents, you are still supported by a massive HEMA community that is here to support your work.
Gratitude is simply the skill (yes, I think of it as a skill, because we are typically unaware of all we have so we need to train our minds) of noting the many gifts we have around us. From the clinical perspective, I teach patients to savor the many little things in their lives, like the touch of breeze on the first warm day of the spring, the feel of the first cool night of autumn, the sunrise, a delicious meal with friends, the giggles of our wee little loved ones, etc. From the HEMA perspective, it's appreciating the fact that you are in HEMA, that you have people with whom to train, that there are numerous resources available to help you in everything you do.
Whatever it is exactly, make an effort every day to show your gratitude for being involved in HEMA.
This is something we've all needed at some point in our HEMA lives, though we may not have always given ourselves the benefit.
Bottom line is, sooner or later you're going to fail. "Failure" in this case has just as flexible a definition as does success, so how you define fail is going to shift, but it is something you will have to overcome. Maybe it's because you didn't win the gold, maybe you just aren't able to get that Krump down, maybe you can just never beat this one opponent while sparring.
It doesn't matter what it is, failure is in your future. When this inevitably happens you absolutely must show yourself self-compassion. Beating yourself up due to this failure will never help you, and is in fact guaranteed to hurt you. Cut yourself some slack, embrace your imperfect humanity, and keep moving forward.
Stay loose and train hard, friends!
-- Scott
The overarching concept of the article from which I'm drawing the information is that if you are doing these specific things then you will be a success at a given activity. In the words of the article, "Success isn't just about money, power, and fame. Personal fulfillment and making an impact count for something too. We collected a series of indicators that you're going to be more successful than you think. Those include being open to failure and making time every day to learn. If even a few of these signs sound familiar to you, you're making good progress."
Provocative and potentially click-bait titles aside, it is something I think could prove useful for every HEMA practitioner out there.
Enjoy!
As I was recently scrolling through a news app on my phone, I came across this article by Business Insider entitled "11 Signs You're Going to be Successful, Even If It Doesn't Feel Like It." I found the advice given in it to be quite interesting and something I thought could be easily applicable to what we do in HEMA.
Now, given the source of the article, it should be obvious (even if you don't follow the link) that success, in this case, refers specifically to success at business, and that typically has a fairly narrow definition. In business, one's success is typically measured by the bottom line, either of your division or your own business, or even sometimes by how much you personally earn. It could be measured by the number of acquisitions your business makes, how much territory it covers, its market share, whatever, but it typically boils down to money.
Things are not so black-and-white when it comes to HEMA. There is any number of ways in which we could personally define our success within the context of the branch of HEMA we study. Did you earn a medal at a tournament? That's a very clear example of success for some people, but let me suggest to you that it might equally be a success for another person to have just competed at all. Success is getting better at the art you study, it's honing in on one particular move that has been vexing you, it's teaching someone else to do something you cognitively grasp but can't quite physically pull off.
So as we go through the examples provided in the article and as I put my own personal spin on it, keep asking yourself how you can adapt this point to fit your definition of success. We all want to achieve different things in our beloved art, and what one considers success another might consider irrelevant while another considers it a bridge too far to even consider.
As I have mentioned several times by this point in numerous blog posts, I'm a psychotherapist, and one thing I always have to remind folks is that success cannot be viewed as an absolute, as a monolithic black-and-white block of either complete success or abject failure. Rather, it's infinite shades of gray along the way towards your definition of success. So take these suggestions and adapt them to fit your world and your HEMA, and remember that success is never a destination, but rather a journey that's well worth taking.
You're Always Looking for a Better Way to do Things
Innovation is very often one hallmark of a very successful business. To quote from the article, "John Sculley...said throughout his career he's always asked questions like, 'Why is it done this way?' He said success is largely about the willingness 'to solve a problem in a way that's never been solved before.'"
This puts HEMA in an interesting space, doesn't it? One on hand, innovation is not really what we're all about. Our job is to take something from a discreet period in time and reconstruct or recontextualize it as accurately as possible. From the perspective of the business world, we are intentionally solving problems the same way they always have been because that's what is historically valid.
Yet, on the other hand, we do always want to find better ways to do things that are still historically valid. It's certainly not uncommon for someone -- or even the HEMA community as a whole -- to accept a given interpretation as valid and accurate, only to later question that interpretation because a better and equally valid interpretation came along.
From this perspective, then, we are expressing exactly the same mindset as that suggested in the article. We see something that works and is good, yet still wonder if it might not be improved upon in some way. Perhaps it's only a slightly nuanced change, perhaps a slight alteration of sword angle or a minor shift in foot position, yet nonetheless there we are trying to find a better way to do it because that's what makes us better.
Then, of course, this can be taken as regarding overall improvement. Maybe the "better way to do things" isn't trying something different at all, but rather doing the same things as close to perfect as possible. We can all most likely easily identify what we're not doing so well, but as long as we are working towards improvement in a very deliberate way then we are already getting closer to success.
You Have a Vision for the Kind of Life You Want
Remember that this article was written specifically for businesspeople in mind, but that it also reaches into the realm of overall healthy living. This is one of those meta indicators that suggests generally living a life well lived. Given that fact, this might initially seem a little too wide scope to be applicable to our HEMA work. However, I think we can apply this directly by asking if we have a vision for the kind of HEMA life we want.
By which I mean, do you know where you are going with this? Are you all in and dedicated to perfecting your art to the best of your ability, or is this just a fun hobby you do on the side along with several other hobbies? Is it your intent to become competitive and to make the tournament circuit, or are you happy to just hang with your club and spar sometimes? Do you want to focus on research, or poorly understood weapons system, or writing in general?
The point here is that it really doesn't matter what kind of HEMA life you want (remember how we said success will mean different things to different people?), but you need to know where you're going with things or else you will likely float in limbo. It's never so much the direction in which we choose to go, but rather that we are going in a direction of our own choosing and not just idly floating where chance and circumstance take us.
Choose the HEMA life you want, regardless of what that may be, and then assertively pursue that life to the best of your abilities. You will be happier in general and appreciate your HEMA work all the more.
You're Using Your "Signature Strengths"
The article defines this very succinctly: "Your signature strengths are simply the skills you're uniquely good at."
That's certainly simple enough and should seem pretty obvious in regards to an activity like HEMA that is composed of numerous little skills all coming together. However, for some reason, people have a bad habit of focusing on building up their deficits to the detriment of their strengths rather than focusing on what they already do well.
And please don't think I'm suggesting you not work to get better at your deficits. You clearly should, but not to the exclusion of your strengths. You might also have to accept that you may well never be very good at this or that, and so instead should rely on what works well for you.
To clarify, let's imagine a fighter has an absolute gift for making a fast and accurate thrust, one that easily allows him to get a hit regardless of what guard is being used. However, he isn't satisfied with the fact that his Zwerch is weak and sloppy, so when in a fight he often will use the Zwerch because he wants to have it tested rather than the thrust he naturally does so well. Consequently, he gets a great many hits to his head.
Note what you're already good at and make your fighting based around those rather than trying to shoehorn in skills that are not your best. Approaching your fighting like this will definitely help make you more successful at HEMA.
You're Open to Failure
I don't know a single HEMA participant who hasn't dealt with failure of some kind. Whether in tournament or sparring, whether in taking up a new weapon or developing a class, we've all suffered the sting of failure.
Good. If you're afraid to fail that also means you're afraid to try new things, and until you can do that you will never grow as a fighter or as a person. As I said above, there is only ever so much "new" we can abide given the nature of HEMA, but that doesn't mean we can't intentionally step out of our comfort zone in other ways.
We can still do something new while maintaining historical validity, regardless of whether we fear failure or not. For instance, one thing I've definitely noted among new students is a fear of sparring, especially in front of others, for fear of failure. They fear failure while sparring, forgetting that the only way to not fail in the long run is to spar and just deal with the unavoidable failures in the short term. This is also true of trying new weapons or systems, and in numerous other ways that still allow us to honor the past.
Whatever way we chose to try new things, we have to remember that, despite what the movies say, failure is always an option!
You're Willing to Take Calculated Risks
Starting up in HEMA is something of a calculated risk to begin with, but it doesn't end there, because HEMA is, in a great many ways, about personal growth.
There are so many ways in which the practice of HEMA can encourage us to be more than we thought we could be, or do things we never thought possible. I've long felt that the best way to manage anxiety is to take up Longsword because once you realize you can handle a three-foot-long piece of steel coming at your head you start to feel are more empowered.
But once you're past that stage, every step forward could potentially be a calculated risk for you. Are you thinking about going to your first major tournament? Considering teaching your first class? Do you have a presentation you want to give at a conference? All of these things are examples of "calculated risk" within the confines of our HEMA work, and something that suggests you are working towards success.
You're Nice to People -- Even if They're Not You're Superiors
There are certainly jerks in the HEMA community. However, this is a perfect example of how winning medals, or running large events, or running a successful club, or being known as an excellent whatever won't matter if your reputation as a jerk precedes you.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'm of the mind we should all be nice to everyone. But when viewed from this perspective of success you can certainly see where being nice does indeed pay off. This gets to the idea of networking, of having resources and supports you can call upon, even just of reaching out to bounce a question or an idea off someone. Also, it will be exceedingly hard to be part of any club if you are a jerk, regardless of whether you run the club or not. All of these things translate into a more complete understanding of things, which is certainly a metric by which we can measure success from the HEMA perspective.
Now, being "nice" doesn't mean that you agree with everyone. People can have wildly different interpretations of things, and just because you are nice doesn't mean you can't express your disagreement in a reasonable and respectful way. Also, HEMA is a wide swathe of people, and there are going to be loads of people with whom you disagree -- whether it's in politics, or faith, or life choices, whatever. We can disagree amicably and yet still be nice.
To quote the article, "Coles...said: 'The thing that I always try and say...is your peer group is really the most important influence on your life because you are going to rise and fall together...a group of you will start our together, and they sort of pull you with them.'"
So you can be anything you want, but still don't be a jerk.
You Exhibit a "Beginner's Mind"
This is the point I featured in the most recent "Short Shot" post. As I said in that original post, this is a valuable mindset when it comes to HEMA because it's so easy to get stuck in a rut.
Even with the confines of historical validity, we trap ourselves by always doing the same thing the same way even when it's never seemed to really work. Yet, because that's the way we were taught or what we were told is right that's the way we've always done it. But having a beginner's mind always us to escape the limits of our own paradigm for a moment, and in so doing open ourselves up to something truly wonderful and new.
You Make Time Every Day to Learn
This is something I think we all should do in the larger contexts of our lives. We need to exercise our mental "muscles" just as we do our physical ones, so every day we need to be reading, or talking about things with knowledgeable people, or learning new skills, or watching videos, or learning in whatever way seems best to us.
In our HEMA lives, this imperative only becomes all the more vital. It is quite literally our jobs within this context to learn something new every day. We can do this in the ways I mentioned above, but also by training with a mind towards learning something new about how we do something, or by recording our movements to dissect later. Whichever way we do it, it is an absolute must that we continue with our learning process and never assume we know there is everything there is to learn about our chosen art.
I am afraid all too often this is an aspect of HEMA that goes by the wayside. HEMA is not just the physical aspect, although that clearly is the ultimate expression of what we're doing. Without the learning aspect, however, we're just swinging swords and other weapons about willy-nilly. Without learning our sparring would very legitimately look like the worst Hollywood sword fight you can think of simply because there is no objective standard for what's right and wrong.
Learning is, compared to the excitement of fighting with Longsword, rapier, or saber, often overshadowed, yet it is no less important. And I would even go so far as to say those HEMA practitioners who are known mostly for their transcriptions, translations, and interpretations are no less magnificent as those who are known as known as amazing fighters.
As the article puts it, "You should be allotting some of your time to reading or research -- something that will expand your horizons." Be successful in HEMA, and never stop learning!
You're Self-Aware
A vitally important quality in any context, in something like HEMA I feel it's even more so. Being self-aware is the quality that will allow you to recognize that perhaps a given technique is very weak and needs to be improved, or that perhaps you're not actually the best person to teach a certain class. Self-awareness in this context is the skill of knowing yourself as a HEMA practitioner, your strengths and weaknesses, and a willingness to evaluate those honestly.
This clearly also extends to your role as a teacher. You have to know what you do well and what you do not, and use that knowledge for the good of your students. If you are too full of yourself to admit that a given concept vexes you, then you will never be a terribly good teacher.
As the article says, "Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith...writes: 'If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world.'"
You Show Gratitude
Again, this is an important quality in every context of life but certainly a must in HEMA.
Let's be honest, none of us have gotten here by ourselves. We've all either had instructors or club mates that have helped us reach whatever point we have. Even if, by a strange quirk of chance, you are fully self-trained and you have developed a high level of competency simply through your own native talents, you are still supported by a massive HEMA community that is here to support your work.
Gratitude is simply the skill (yes, I think of it as a skill, because we are typically unaware of all we have so we need to train our minds) of noting the many gifts we have around us. From the clinical perspective, I teach patients to savor the many little things in their lives, like the touch of breeze on the first warm day of the spring, the feel of the first cool night of autumn, the sunrise, a delicious meal with friends, the giggles of our wee little loved ones, etc. From the HEMA perspective, it's appreciating the fact that you are in HEMA, that you have people with whom to train, that there are numerous resources available to help you in everything you do.
Whatever it is exactly, make an effort every day to show your gratitude for being involved in HEMA.
You're Self-Compassionate
This is something we've all needed at some point in our HEMA lives, though we may not have always given ourselves the benefit.
Bottom line is, sooner or later you're going to fail. "Failure" in this case has just as flexible a definition as does success, so how you define fail is going to shift, but it is something you will have to overcome. Maybe it's because you didn't win the gold, maybe you just aren't able to get that Krump down, maybe you can just never beat this one opponent while sparring.
It doesn't matter what it is, failure is in your future. When this inevitably happens you absolutely must show yourself self-compassion. Beating yourself up due to this failure will never help you, and is in fact guaranteed to hurt you. Cut yourself some slack, embrace your imperfect humanity, and keep moving forward.
Stay loose and train hard, friends!
-- Scott
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