Do or Do Not

This is Yoda‘s memorable line from the second Start Wars movie, “Empire Strikes Back.” There is so much more to the line than its catchy symbolism. It has deep philosophical meaning. When someone says, "I'll try..." it gives the person an out. Trying lets failure be an acceptable option. To prevent ourselves from being exposed to the stigma of failure, we use words like “well I tried.” I think that society likes to use the word “try” as it means to not acknowledge the lack of accomplishing something. But in reality, we make too big of a deal of not doing something and we call it failure. The point is, there isn’t always a problem with lack of accomplishment.

One of my first lessons around “trying” was a sales job I had early in my career. We had Monday morning team meetings with a roundtable discussion on our activities and every week one guy kept telling our boss all the appointments and sales he was trying to make.  The boss finally snapped one Monday and said, “I don’t pay you to try, I pay you to sell.”

I use this similar adage with my high school football players; when they tell me they tried to make that tackle they missed, my response was” I play kids who make the tackle as opposed to those who try to make it.”

Why do we fear failure? There really is no failure, one either succeeds or learns. There is the Chinese proverb - fall down seven times, get up eight. The reality of ‘do not’ from Yoda isn’t a negative, just a fact. If you keep trying to sell but don’t; maybe it’s time to take a sales training course or even find another career choice. If you try to tackle but can’t, maybe it is time to stay after practice and relearn technique or become an offensive player that doesn’t have to tackle.

It is not politically correct to allow failure or even discomfort to ever develop. We’ve gotten soft – parents, schools, society. Our Nation uses Government Bailouts (GM, Housing market) and other overreaching actions to ‘lift everyone up’. We give everyone a trophy just to try. I would argue that as we have become softer, more people get bitter than get better. We hesitate to allow suffering; overlooking that suffering is often how one learns to be a success. We are failing in developing mindsets to overcome the problems. Success by failure is not an oxymoron. As parents, my wife and I never wanted our daughters to fail, but we did look forward to their failures. Sometimes what we learn in failure is the best education we can get. When you make a mistake or fail, you're forced to look back and find out exactly where you went wrong and formulate a new plan for your next attempt. Football teams spend on average 3x the amount of time looking at game films of losses as opposed to wins as there are more coaching moments.

History is littered with examples of success from failure. Failure isn’t the opposite of success—it’s part of the process. Every setback is a lesson. Every misstep is a chance to adjust. The ones who go the distance are the ones who don’t let failure define them. So, if you’re struggling, doubting, or feeling like you’ve fallen short, remember this: Failure is not fatal. Keep going. Failure isn’t a verdict; it’s data. Use it.