The F Word

On this 'Grab A Glass' episode, DT attempts to make sense of a concept many fear to speak on and go through.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
The blight and the hobby of isnice to gonna keep it flats on the
linet n life, kick it,have a lost, so cravel lost.

(00:32):
The advocacy of failure as an accelerantfor success is a concept I haven't quite
grasped yet, because that's something Ihear all the time. Maybe you do
too. It's possible. We allhave different experiences I'm learning. I'll see
something or hear something one way,and I'll realize that somebody hurt it completely

(00:56):
different, but that's how I hearit. You have to fail before you
can succeed. Fall down nine times, get up ten. Failure is not
the opposite of success, it's partof success. Only those who dare to
fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.Giving up is the only sure way to

(01:19):
fail. You know that type ofshit. I've been in failing situations,
and the consistency of those poor resultsdelivering a lesson worth learning from has been
sporadic at best. If we're beingreal, as we always are here on
a podcast called Grab a Glass,sometimes there is a clear, glaring moral

(01:46):
to the story. Oops, wefailed, and that's why we failed,
and we know we should never dothat part of that thing. Again,
it's clear. But other times thatfailure is not a clear, glaring worl
with a story and a clear timelineas to where we went wrong. Other

(02:08):
times that failure is a gaping blackhole that has no beginning or end,
no literary happy go lucky sesame StreetBarney ass conclusion. It just doesn't exist.
You failed, you don't know why, and that's it. And I

(02:30):
know for some of you, allthat language seems harsh. Even the word
fail seems harsh. There are wordspeople just seem to be allergic to because
it feels too real, failure beingone of them, regret, addict,
absent, etc. There are justwords that people don't want to say,

(02:51):
even if they feel them. Thosewords don't scare me. They are a
part of the human experience. Tome, therefore, I can't be afraid
of at least speaking them. Butwhile there are some brave souls out there,
and I'll commend you if it's real, there are some brave people out
there, there are also some bigtime cappers out there that talk to talk,

(03:15):
but perhaps don't walk it. Ime on the show, on this
podcast, I'm telling you I personallyam afraid to fail because I've done it
before, and there's no way ofknowing if that lesson is going to be
clear or not. You could goyears after a failure and it's still a

(03:36):
head scratcher. That's hard. Whatis failure? How is that defined?
Do you think? You ask me? If I were to be asked to
define it, I wouldn't fail atthat. I can tell you what a

(03:57):
clear definition of failure is to medown into a few simple words for you.
Failure to me is heartbreak, whetheryou've felt it or you've caused someone
else to feel it. I thinkthat that's failure. That is what failure
looks and feels like to me.You got your hopes up or somebody you

(04:18):
got somebody else's hopes up. Youpromise something or you will promise something,
and it just didn't come to fruition, and now you're just broken that dark
heavy I don't even know if sadnessgoes to it. But you gave it,
this this thing, You gave itall you had and it crashed.

(04:44):
That feels like failure to me.Betrayal, whether of other people or yourself
and who you really are. Ithink betrayal is failure. You misled someone,
You're a failure purposefully, or youmisled yourself, you betrayed who you

(05:15):
truly are for something, and thenthat didn't come to fruition. Ooh wooh.
But what I've taken from these situations, the failures, as well as
the confusion that comes with that weirdthing that comes with all of that,

(05:36):
is that a majority of life ispracticed for something else, and the connections
to practice and the ones that countit's sadly unknown. Wamp warm. I
know, damn my athletes know.And there are other fields besides sports that

(05:58):
this analogy works for. But let'suse sports works. You work on these
situations in practice. They feel dumbas hell in the moment, just just
just what the fuck are we doing? Why are we doing this? You
don't want to do them. Theysuck, You fail, you get yelled
at. You have to do itagain and again and again and again,

(06:21):
and you have to do it overtomorrow and then next week. We'll always
do these stupid ass special team drillsin college. Yes, I played football
in college. Uh, we dothese dumb ass goofy ass special teams drills.

(06:44):
And then one moment, I thinkI was a junior, we needed
this thing and it worked, andit was like, what, there's no
way. At some point when itcounts in a game, that thing happens
that calls for that stupid ass thingyou practiced, and you do it without
even thinking, as a response toa situation instinctually and it works. That's

(07:10):
the only way that my brain canconceptually compute a failure with no clear result.
So if you're going through one nowa feeling effort of some sort,
I hope to God I pray thatthere is a clear lesson for you in
that moment so that you can moveon and you at least have that as

(07:33):
a reason as to why you aregoing through the pain that you're going through.
But if there isn't, in thatweird way that you're sitting in this
awful, gaping black hole of Idon't know what the hell I should take
from this. A No, youaren't alone. I'm telling you that I've

(07:56):
been through it, and perhaps perhapsthis situation is practiced for you to respond
in a shining moment later on.My name is David Thomas, David Gerard
Thomas. Cheers, thanks for listening.