Do you remember when you first learned how to ride a bike? How many times did you fall before being able to get the hang of it? I got my first bike when I was 5 years old. My dad would help teach me how to ride it on Saturdays after lunch. The first time I was finally able to ride it on my own I felt so proud of myself and so confident that I decided to do something with my new ability. My family was taking a walk after lunch as usual, as I rode my bike ahead of them. As we got close to turning down a small road, I took a decision to ride my bike down a hill alongside of the road instead. This hill however was not a soft and grassy downhill. It was full of pine trees so there were many obstacles, not to mention the bumpiness of that hill because of the pine straw and pine cones. I really don’t remember the reason why I thought it was a smart decision, but I walked my bike to the top of the hill, and began riding it down.
As I rode down that hill at full speed, I could hear my mom yelling at my dad, while he yelled at me to use the brakes. What brakes? I had no idea the bike had those. I had just learned to ride the bike, and hadn’t rid it fast enough to use the brakes yet, I had been using my feet the whole time. I have no idea how, but I made it down the hill, passing by every tree without bumping head on into one. I was happy to find that I had made it out of the trees, but there was still one more problem, parked cars. Luckily, I wasn’t going too fast, that by the time I made it to the cars, I fell to one side softly hitting my shoulder on one of them. I got off the bike, and turned around laughing and cheering while my dad behind me stopped running as he hugged me and laughed. My mom was not happy of course, and told me to never do that again.
When we are young we feel unbeatable and unafraid to try a lot of new things. We lack the fear to fail, because we don’t know what it means to fail yet. Sometimes I wish I still had the courage of when I was a kid- unafraid to try something new, to believe in myself, and feel proud of what I could do because of the missing fear of failing. I don’t know of a single person that learned how to ride their bike without falling once. We would’ve never been able to ride a bike if we hadn’t gotten up after falling each time before, and now that we are older, we forget that it’s okay to fall sometimes. We get discouraged to get up and keep trying time and time again.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
One important thing I like to remind myself about, is that failing and falling both lead to success. The question is if you are willing to keep trying and how many times are you willing to get back up after failure. Also, there is no shame in failing, we should let failing be our motivation to keep going, and not a reason to give up. I will admit sometimes we do put ourselves in situations that are hard to handle, we get into something we may not be ready for, like me riding down that hill, but even then, there will always be a place of soft landing and someone who will have your back in case you need them.
I have heard of many success stories, and usually the first thing that comes to mind is how those people started out. Where did their success begin? Truth is that most of the time those stories begin with failures, and not just one fail, but many. One of my favorite animated movies of all times is “Meet the Robinsons”. If you haven’t seen, you should; it’s great, especially if you have kids who need encouraging. Anyway, the Robinsons are a family who throughout time learned to not only accept their failures, but to celebrate them. How beautiful would it be if we thought that way about our failures?
Thomas Edison once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always try just one more time.” One of our goals in life is to succeed in all we want for ourselves, and we won’t get there any faster if we give up and decide not to try again. Let’s encourage each other to look past our failures, try to celebrate them, and to keep moving. Being afraid to fail is like being afraid to succeed because most of the time you’ll need to fail in order to learn how to succeed.
Sincerely,
Heidi