Failure...F*** that!

 Training ruck...

Zoom in; this is what it looks like to stare failure (or my I-phone) right in its dirty face!

Let's talk about the "F" word. No, not the one you are thinking about. Well, okay first we will talk about the one on your mind...

When I was a kid, I had a pretty bad potty mouth. It was so bad, that one day at school, my friend Tiffany pulled me aside during recess to talk to me (it must have been fourth grade). Tiffany was a good Catholic girl and was concerned about my language. She told me that sometimes when she sinned, she would visit church and go to confessional.

"Everyone sins Jaala, there is no reason to be ashamed of it." She stated.

I listened intently.

Tiffany told me, "As long as you confess your sins to God you will be forgiven."

Considering the information, I asked "So swearing is a sin?"

She looked at me and smiled sweetly, "Yes it is."

I asked, "But what if I do it, just when I really mean it and need some strong words?"

"It is still bad Jaala." She explained.

"Okay." I said softly.

Thinking she had convinced me, she asked, "So will you go to confessional?"

I paused for a moment, then replied, "F*** that!"

Yes, it may have been completely inappropriate that I had such a sailor mouth at ten years old, but I was a precocious girl with an analytical mind. I didn't want to be like everyone else, and I sure as hell (see what I did there) did not want to stop swearing.

Luckily, everyone around me let me be the tenacious person that I was. My attitude, as expressed by my words, was that I would never let someone else tell me what I could and could not do if I was passionate enough about it. Apparently at age ten, I was passionate about using explicit language.

Over the years, though I've tempered my mouth (well, not really but in public at least) I have not lost my determined spirit. I refuse to do what others think I should do; I live life hard and choose the tougher route 9.9 times out of ten. Life is much more exciting this way. 

So what am I getting at?

This: (Thanks Adele)

Hello?

SELECTION?

Its me.

I was wondering if after all these years

You'd like to meet.

To go over...

Everything....

They say time supposed to heal...

And I'M DONE HEALING; LET'S GET THIS SHIT DONE!

After not finishing GORUCK Selection two years in a row, many people may think that it is time to move on to something different, but me, I am not done yet.

To paraphrase my friend Grant, he says:

"If you are not failing, you are not setting tough enough goals."

I believe him.

But, I also believe that if you fail at a tough goal and you learn from that failure, you do not have to reset this goal or adjust it lower. On the contrary, you must move through the failure and use it as a tool to succeed at that once unattainable goal. Because if you actually learn from failure, you grow. Then scary things become less scary, tough things become easier, and before you know it you've hit your mark.

So, though I have erred, my methods have changed and I am smarter now. I have not adjusted downward, things will not get easier, but I will not lose sight of what I want to achieve; I keep driving forward toward that goal of finishing GORUCK Selection.

I'm staring failure right in the face and, in the words of my youth saying:

Failure...Fuck that.