Accepting some failure

Improvise, adapt, overcome…

Accepting some failure

Improvise, adapt, overcome…

Words I try to live by

Success Opportunity Failure Sign

So this gardening season has been absolutely terrible. We have had multiple crop failures, ultimately things that we are supposed to demonstrate proper techniques with, and count on for our influx of fresh fruits and vegetables for the summer months, have been a flop this season. Thats life though isn’t it? Sometimes try as you might, you fail.

Like many things, its not what happens so much as what you choose to do when those things happen that really matters. In every failure is at least one lesson if you choose to seek out that lesson and want to learn from it. Seemingly our environment, both in nature, and psychologically, have built in lessons that allow us to improve our next go at things.

Rather than staying stuck in the frustrations of this years agricultural failures, (believe me I was there for about a week when I was staring at barren soil where seeds failed to sprout, transplants withered and died, and voracious pests ate healthy plants to the ground) I chose to stop looking at the proverbial rear view mirror and instead, out the windshield. By mid July the time to feel sorry for ourselves was over, its too late to replant that late in Maine’s short growing season.

Step 1) Get over it. Dwelling on our failures makes us focus on our failures.
Step 2) Focus on the positive. We have had more successes agriculturally and otherwise this year  than I can count… They just happen to not be most of our vegetables.
Step 3) Learn what we can from the experience. I have already made some changes to our planting protocol for next season even though its 9 months away.

Even in our failures, we find teachable moments… If everything was a success it would be easy to teach success under ideal conditions, but the reality is that the important successes in life are rarely under ideal conditions, they are when it really counts, often admist or directly after a major failure.

So if for nothing else, some failure in my life is perfectly acceptable because it provides me an opportunity to lead young men by example, and show them how to fail and get back up.