"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail”. - Confucius
You’re killing your dream.
You’re on autopilot and every reaction you make is yet another dream-crushing step taking you farther away from its fulfillment.
It’s easy to get up at 6 am every morning and put on your mud-sloshing boots to feed your horses because you can’t fathom the stress you’d cause them if you were a second late in delivering them their 3 course meal.
Flying the kite of your stall bound thoroughbred is just another walk in the park and you’re grateful for the life-saving grace of a little ace so you can finally start trotting for 2 minutes because this time you’re determined to rehab that suspensory ligament your devoted athlete sacrificed for you.
You may have a twelve hour day ahead, but there’s always time to squeeze out another for fence repair after a brief moment on your knees thanking God nobody’s bleeding…this time.
An overnight sleepover in the tackroom is an exciting adventure as you wake up every 90 minutes to give more IV fluids to the colicking horse trying to yank them out… and hooking up the trailer at 3 AM to haul your newborn foal to the emergency veterinary clinic three hours away is a covertly welcomed relief from the daily grind that comes with the territory of living your dream life.
Yet you continue borrowing vitality from the future as you muster up another round of strength fueled by your own stubborn will…the coffee bean is a vegetable right?..and fasting is the new healthy… But you still make it to the gym to desperately keep your body from completely falling apart, so you’re doing great…right?
The problem is…
You’re so busy trying not to fail that you fail to see you’ve already failed.
So you turn another blind eye as you put your head down and shift it into top gear because the thought of failure is simply too much to bare.
And you’ll reach your first FEI by the grace of God but your body will give out soon after. Your dream foal will end up being someone else’s dream horse because you can no longer lift up the pitchfork to care for them. Your favorite saddle will sit unused, collecting dust because the mere thought of putting another foot in the stirrup is exhausting let alone the grooming, tacking, lunging, cooling out, wrapping, cleaning care which comes with it all…
Yeah, it turns out that killing yourself one grueling step at a time in the name of chasing down your dream is far easier than standing face to face with the victory that continues to elude you. For when you’re finally forced to stand and look failure in the eye, you have no other choice but to see that the ultimate cause lurking in its shadows is you.
Heroic as you are, every automatic reaction to yet another day’s hurdle is just more distance put between you and your endless pursuit of victory.
But when you finally drop to your knees and surrender to failure…
…you set yourself free.
It is within this sacred moment that you are now privy to something that wasn’t there before. An alternative. A different path. Another way to the fulfillment of your life’s destiny. A more direct route - right there - right in front of you all along was staring you down and you were just too busy running past all the signs.
Autopilot had you mindlessly plowing over every hurdle that got in your way, celebrating your wins one by one as they each reared their ugly head. But, like a hydra, these severed heads just kept growing back. Another day, another hurdle. Perhaps in a different place or under a another disguise but the cycle continues…hurdle, jump, repeat, hurdle, jump, repeat, hurdle…
But now that you know defeat you realize that these “hurdles” weren’t in the way after all. In fact, it turns out they were the way. Each one of them an opportunity to see a different choice…another path which leads to an even greater destiny than the one you’ve been desperately grasping for.
You are standing face to face with this dream - for it is right in front of you. It’s so close, you’re looking right past it, thinking you have to travel far, work hard, do more, pay your dues and earn the right to step foot on that podium…
But victory does not come from success.
Victory is born from failure.
...Are you ready?
For in not seeing what’s right in front of you, you’ve already failed. Now all you have to do is let failure show you the way to the freedom that will bring you your greatest dream.
Know the liberation of defeat and you will rise to Victory.
What have you got to lose?
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