There's Nothing Wrong with a Healthy Dose of Failure

A few weeks ago I traveled back to the Ice Chamber for the annual West Coast Classic competition. This was my first time lifting at the professional level (24kg) in a Kettlebell Sport competition, and I definitely felt some pressure to perform in front of my IC friends and coaches.

Here are my Jerk and Snatch sets from the competition:

My Biathlon score came out to 210 (131 jerks + 79 snatches), just 2 points short of the 212 total I needed to earn my second Master of Sport title.

In other words: I failed.

Am I upset that I didn't reach the Master of Sport title?

Not really. Yes, it would have been cool to say I have another Master of Sport performance under my belt. But in reality, I was disappointed with my Snatch performance, and hope to achieve the Master of Sport ranking in a competition where I can more accurately display mastery of the 24kg Snatch lift. Failing to reach that 212 number, especially by such a small margin, actually just made me hungry to work even harder in training for my next competition.

So take this as a reminder: There's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of failure. It keeps us humble, and reminds us to keep working harder.

Have you ever failed at something you cared about? How did you bounce back from failure?