SFH #112: Game Over > New Game

A tool for resetting and resilience

If you didn't notice, I've been getting my blog out later and later as we've been on this journey. My groove being the evening post-dinner as the sun has stayed up later into the summer. ☀️ Last night after an evening of food and conversation with some good men, I went back home to relieve grandma from babysitting and found myself exhausted from the day. I got a headbutt the night before at 2:00 am, startling me awake as I shared a bed with Hawk. 🤪 That exhaustion turned into a splitting headache the next night. So I figured I'd get out a short something or other. I've done it before under the gun of the 24-hour cycle, and yet I gave last night a pass. It may have been the pressure in my head; it may be the moment in time or a little bit of column A and column B. I was practicing game over > new game.

We all have heard in some form or fashion (likely many times over)—from failure comes success. Today, I want to share some experiences of failing and what it has taught me about success.

Game over > new game is a phrase the evokes a beginner's mindset for me. I reset from the bump, the mistake, the failure, and now I get to start over more positively. After years of being resilient in the face of physical endurance, I seemed to have burned the wick down too short. Testing my resilience on the frontline of high-stakes start-up pressure in New York City while building a family showed me many limitations and flaws. The good news 🗞, I got to deconstruct how I broke down and learn new ways to rebuild and persevere moving forward. So in comes this new reset mantra.

I love to use this positive self-talk for small failures like missing deadlines, letting the laundry sit too long, or having a bad day of food choices. These simple flubs are the most common and most abundant. We can often create stories and personality traits of these habits. I've learned that I need to be flexing my resilience consistently here. Insert obvious workout gains analogy. 💪😜 Bottom line: In most cases, using tools like gratitude, positive self-talk, and friction adapting can help build and maintain our resilience around these small trip-ups. If you expect a different behavior and continue getting tripped on something like being on time, there is something more profound to unpack.

Now, there are the more significant failures. I believe this range has a broad spectrum based on who we are as individuals in this world. This really comes down to what we expect from ourselves and how we measure our success and failure. My biggest missteps have been humbling--the education is still coming. Whether it was my first failed marriage, getting a DWI, or being in a CH11 bankruptcy for my most meaningful business venture, I utilize the mantra and much more (though it takes deep work). I've found it takes something in particular to keep raising the bar of success—we must expand our ability to fail and skills to work through them.

It is in the trenches of learning to fail faster, better and finding more grace in the process that I've been the last few years. It's often been uncomfortable and unrelenting, though it's sure been worth the ride.🎢

Here I start again. Game over > New game. 🙌