Not long ago, my daughter bought a new t-shirt bearing the expression “I Tried” with a photo of Disney’s beloved character, Stitch.
If you know the story behind the cute, furry creature, you know the little guy is a bit on the naughty side; however, he is constantly trying to turn over a new leaf and do the right thing. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tries, the results of his “trying” are usually messy, embarrassing, and simply troublesome. Still, he is beloved for one very endearing reason…he tries. Maybe the outcome isn’t perfect, but you can’t fault the effort.
Friends, isn’t this what we long for, someone to recognize that we are definitely not perfect but we are trying all the same? There should be some credit for that alone? After all, effort is sometimes all we’ve got! So we try…and try…and try.
We like to believe that our hard work will always produce successful results, of course we do. Who wants to work hard and fail? No one, that’s who!
The reality though is that sometimes our trying and working yield less that stellar results or at the very least, unexpected results.
But is that a fail? I guess it all depends on your perspective. That’s a big word. In my opinion, that word holds the power to turn a bad situation into a good situation, or maybe if you can’t go that far, a bad situation into a learning situation. Our outlook is vital to our emotional and psychological health. After all, life has a lot of uncontrollable situations. We can often feel like we are spinning out of control and just along for the ride. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, we can’t control other people’s actions or opinions. But we can control our reaction to them. We can absolutely decide who gets to be a part of our inner circle of influencers. We can, and we should. Get rid of toxic people and toxic situations. Surround yourself with those who support and love you, even when your “try” looks like a “fail”.
We can’t always control the situations that happen to us, but we can learn from those situations and come out stronger on the other side. We can decide that we are going to look hard for the positive, search for the rainbows, and create the calm outlook that says…I tried. Sometimes, it’s all we’ve got. But always, it is enough.
Every supposed fail has a beauty in the ashes, has a rainbow after the storm. I have tried to train myself to have a positive outlook even in the midst of the difficult. My well-planned day goes awry? Instead of letting myself go down the road of frustration and the day is ruined thinking, my goal is to open my eyes to the opportunities in the disruption. Perhaps it is a divine appointment to make a difference in someone else’s day. It really isn’t all about me after all. Then there are bigger things.
Recently, I was involved in a pretty awful car accident, which was totally not my fault. A trash truck was backing down the wrong side of the road at high speed and just ran over my car! Yes, that is what I said. And might I mention this was after a work truck slammed into my parked car? To say I was a little traumatized would be an understatement.
Still, after a little effort (ok it took a lot of effort), I sat on the side of the road and began to count my blessings, to create my perspective. This could have been my kids. Every parent knows you would always rather bad stuff happen to you than your kids. I could have been killed…seriously. One of the guys on the garbage truck chose to be honest with the police and tell the whole story. I met lots of kind neighbors.
Now hear what I’m about to say, I get this whole perspective thing right much less than I get it wrong. Still, I’m trying. I have the tools I need to maintain a healthy mental state, and I’m working on learning to use them. I’m trying, and that turns a fail into a win.
Let’s be honest, sometimes failures come from dumb decisions that we knew were wrong from the outset. When that happens, everything I’ve said is still absolutely true. You tried, maybe wrongly, but there is always a lesson to be learned, a rainbow to be seen. Give yourself permission to make mistakes, but by all means, learn the lesson that consequences teach! Don’t waste the pain and the tears.
Other times, the fails are from circumstances outside our ability to foresee or understand; people leave, accidents happen, sickness comes, jobs are lost. It’s life. But here again, perspective is THE single greatest weapon we possess against hopelessness, frustration, anger, stress, or whatever other reaction comes naturally when failure hits home.
But here’s the thing…it’s just a thing.
What I mean is this: life happens. You can give up and let it defeat you, or you can stand up and try again. This sounds simplistic. I understand that. It’s anything but simple. Or easy.
Sometimes we need a little help standing up again, and that’s okay. It’s more than okay, it’s totally human and natural. We need each other. We should never fool ourselves into thinking strong people should always be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Don’t believe it about yourself or others. It sounds good. It would be awesome. But it’s not true. We were not created to go it alone. We need people; more than that, we need God.
Defeat does not have to defeat us. Sometimes the biggest win is in the trying. Many great inventors failed hundreds, even thousands of times before succeeding ONCE. Walt Disney was fired from a job because he supposedly “lacked imagination”. What a laugh! Imagine saying that in retrospect now that we see Walt’s successes. But what if he had quit? What if he had believed the guy who issued this harsh statement? Disney is well-known worldwide for his amazing imagination. The very thing he was definitively told he did not possess is what he made his greatest success. That, my friends, is perspective. He tried. He failed. He tried again.
That can be our story as well. It’s not a shameful thing to say, “I tried”. I would argue it is in fact a mark of the highest success. It is success, with the caveat of understanding that trying does not ever lead to dead-end failure. Failing is success wrapped up in an ugly, multi-layered blanket. It may look ratty, feel scratchy, and appear to be useless. But failure that keeps on trying peels those layers away revealing a success story that is yet to be told.
So don’t let life’s failures get you down. It’s just a thing. Keep on keeping on. And with the great ones who have gone before us, I’m talking to you Stitch, we can say, “I tried!”