Recover the trust in yourself.., We all have failed at some point!

I am convinced that all of us, who have tried something, have failed at some point; and I think the real value is on trying…

A few days ago, a company invited me to share my experience as an open water swimmer with their staff through a conference in which I share my experience related to my solo English Channel swim.

When the session was over, some people asked questions related to the swim and to the experience itself, to whether I had set or not my next challenge, to how did I combine different aspects of my life like family and my training, there were similar questions I tried to answer one by one. At the end of the Q&A session a young man stood up from his chair and asked for the microphone to make one last question, to which I agreed gladly. He grabbed the microphone and said:

How do you gain your trust again after you have failed?

I do not know what face I made, but it was surely a panic face when I listened to the difficulty of what I was being asked, he insisted:  What happens when you fail? How do you recover trust in yourself?

Help!

I was about to have a cough attack, I turned green and really did not know what to respond… however, immediately I remembered the moments in which I had failed in my life as a swimmer and in a second a thousand images went through my mind… so many swimming trial disqualifications due to my own mistakes, the jellyfish attack that made me abandon an open water swim, and with these images I remembered moments in which I have failed by not completing my trainings and many moments more in which I have failed as a person in my daily life… and before all of these circumstances the common factor has being the same thing, trying again  which is the same thing as trying once more.

My response headed this way, I am sharing it right here:

 

Yes, trying again; however, between a failed challenge and trying again, normally there is a lapse of time, to some that time can consist on a few minutes and to others it can consist on a few days, weeks, months or even years, but from my point of view that lapse of time between one and the other becomes a learning period, in which you evaluate the situation, analyze which are the problems and this is the time we have to go back and visualize the event and visualize it successfully. 

This is also the time to realize that eventually we all fail but we are more than winners for trying and even if our next attempt gets also complicated there shall be plenty of opportunities. We should not be afraid to fail, furthermore, my biggest fear is being afraid, I have said it before in many occasions, fear paralyses and prevents you from acting.

I´d rather think that even if I have failed many times, I am lucky because I have had the opportunity to try and then, to try again. The real value is on trying and taking into account that we have all failed once before. And by failing you can also take out the positive part for your next attempt and you shall get there strengthen in a special way; not with physical strength but with a strength that shall make you a winner, it will make you believe again that you can do it and right there you have had recovered the trust you lost in yourself.

Lots of encouragement for the next attempt and remember to enjoy it!Imagen