One of my big goals for the year is to fail more. Not in the I want to start working out for New Years but give up after 2 days type of failing. Rather just the opposite, I want to push myself outside of my comfort zone. Think of it like trying to run a marathon but not being physically able to do it. That failure is what makes a person strive to be better, and that’s exactly what I’m working on failing at.

Because I’m working on trying to commit to small changes so that they will stick I’m only going to talk about two things that I’ve been really working to fail at more. The first is just being open more. Posting on here is a great example of this. It’s easy for me to keep things bottled up, in fact most people have no clue what I’m thinking or feeling or truly care or have passion about. This isn’t necessarily because people tend to only care about themselves, or that they’re too busy talking to listen to me, or anything like that (although in some cases this might be true). Rather it is because it’s easy for me to just keep things to myself. Why bother other people? While I can put myself out there, it does help to have people that actually want to care about me and listen to me, which some of you that read this have actually been doing, so thank you.

I’m currently creating a few smaller projects that I’m planning to have by the end of the month that are going to be more about who I am, what I’m interested in, projects I’m working on, ways I can help you, ways you can help me, etc. If you’re interested and wanting to help with these types of things or just want to help motivate me and be more intentional and relational than feel free to reach out. If you are up for a challenge of your own and aren’t afraid of failing you can always reach out to me in the comments or there is a contact me section, or if you’re reading this you probably already know me and can reach out through other channels. After all this isn’t just my story since life is a group activity it’s our story, so if you’re inspired or motivated or whatever, feel free to leave a response.

The second thing I’m working to fail at more is in being more present. It’s easy to get caught up thinking about the past and the future or being bored in the moment. It’s easy to try and do a million things at once and end up not getting anything done. But it’s almost the easiest to forget how the day actually went by just getting caught up in one or two small things that may have ruined your day or were just the most recent things. To work on that I’m trying to keep track of 5 things every day that were unusual, memorable, exciting, or noteworthy. Part of this is learning to find the extraordinary in the mundane struggles of an “ordinary” life. Part of this is to learn to pay attention to the simple things that I might otherwise miss. Part of this is also wanting to be with other people to make things exciting and memorable and just being open to experience. If you want to help with this one, you can try and reach out and see how my day is going, you can try to make my day memorable, or you can just do things that make me want to work on improving my days even more.

I plan to work on posting how I’m failing every week or two just to help keep myself open and honest. If you would like to reach out and help me that would be much appreciated. If you would like to be held accountable yourself feel free to reach out. In fact if you would like to have your failures and goals put on here feel free to reach out that way. I have no problem with that. If you would like your goal and failures published but not your name that is fine, if you want your name attached just let me know.

Remember we are humans, and as such we are imperfect. Some weeks might be easy to work on improving. Some weeks will be full of struggles. In the end though, if we can learn from our mistakes and continue to strive and aim for new and greater things, it is in those moments that we truly discover what is inside and what success truly is.