You are, you know. Going to fail. I don’t mean ultimately. That’s really up to you, but somewhere along the way you will fail. Let’s face it, your goal is probably something challenging. Maybe it’s losing a certain amount of weight. Maybe it’s getting your cholesterol down. Maybe it’s being able to get up and down from the floor. Whatever it is, there will be times when you stumble on your path to achieving it.

Our perception of failing is typically tied to following our initial plan exactly. Perhaps part of your diet plan is, “I will not eat desserts.”, but then, you attend a birthday party and the birthday cake wins the battle. Afterward, you feel that you have failed, and then, a week later, some other dessert opportunity gets the better of you. “Why even bother! I’m such a failure! I can’t do this.” This is your turning point.

You have a number of choices you can make. Many, frustrated, just give up. Some, keep trying with the same plan and continue to fail and feel badly. Others look at their situation, analyze what happened that threw them off, and change their plan to better handle that situation. It’s all a big experiment. You have an idea of how it should go (your hypothesis), you test it, if it works…great. If it doesn’t, you look at why and make new plan with your next best guess. Test it, repeat, repeat, repeat until you ultimately reach your goal.

Don’t judge yourself for failing. Failing is a part of learning and learning is what’s going to get you to your goal.

So, fail away and embrace the experiment.