Failure — The Fast-Track to Success
Virtual shortcut. No quick fix. In wellness and in life.
This piece is the eighth of a number of stand-alone DESTINY postings on how to rise above and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic by shaping up to be healthy, fit, tough and wise. It is based on the author’s multi-decade insights as a cardiologist and the founder in a non-profit lifestyle coaching program completed by thousands of patients and coworkers. All the advice comes from participants’ real-life experiences, state-of-the-art science and diverse time-honored wisdom.
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Tak Poon, MD
October 7, 2020. 8 min read.
“Code Blue. Room 8, Coronary Care Unit. Code…” the overhead blared unrelentingly. Not two minutes later, a calmer voice announced, “Code Blue cancelled.”
The grateful family said to me, “Thank you so much. It felt like eternity, but we know we’ve just been out here for a short time. How long did that take you, doc?”
“Ten years…and two seconds,” I answered.
Inside the unit, it was not “as seen on TV”. The Code Team was all there within a minute. Everyone was busy, not stressed. Orders were voiced and echoed, clearly, barely above a hush. Stick-on paddles had already been placed on the patient’s chest hours before in anticipation. The final all-around check-in before delivering the reviving electric pulse took two seconds. And a life was saved.
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It had taken all of us many years of training. We had many dry runs, too many real instances and, yes, also many trials and errors along the way.
When dealing with life, nothing is 100%. So, we get as close to it as we can by learning from all of our failures without fail.
And since we’re dealing with life, we openly share all our failures so that we always fast-track on one another’s learning curves.
Experience is just a fancy word for admitting many mistakes.
Having the same experience a thousand times without learning anything is worthless. Useful experience is recovering and learning from each mistake and not repeating the same ones.
After many failures before joining my wellness program, the 2,000 patients and coworkers who graduated were ready for lifelong success, not short-term quick fixes. They knew to expect setbacks along such a journey of a lifetime.
Here are some fast-track tips I have collected from them. They also apply to lifelong success in anything meaningful.
Failure is definitely not a shortcut to quick results.
It is a fast-track to long term meaningful success.
Every failure is already done and paid for,
why not milk it for all it’s worth?
Learning from your own failure “sticks” better.
Learning from others’ failures hurts less.
So cheat and learn from them all.
Fail quick. Fail big. Fail often.
Just not the same way twice.
If you take one step backward after two steps forward,
at least you’re still advancing, and a-dancing.
Take good time to recover, yet not so long as to be left behind the point of no return.
To quit something good for good is permanent failure.
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Now, a virtual “shortcut”.
People usually think, “If I do this, I will get that, then I’ll be happy.”
Successful people often do the opposite. Having failed plenty but never fallen for long, they feel confident from beginning to end, then what they need seems to just appear, and they only do what’s obvious, even natural to them.
Wellness actually works well this way, as well. Strenuous stress and strain from struggling would be, well, anti-wellness.
Imagine saying, “Ugh! What’s happening to this body? Oh no, I shouldn’t eat that. Damn, I’d better exercise. Sh!+, I’m so stressed out.” (Most people don’t really have to imagine saying this.)
Imagine saying, instead, “Ha! I am a happy, healthy person, resilient and wise. I choose not to eat that ‘cause it doesn’t serve me. I feel so much better after my workout. I get so jazzed facing this challenge. My body and mind are in sync.”
Of course, that wouldn’t work until after you’ve had practiced failing “successfully” and recovered from these experiences. This is not the same as “fake it ‘till you make it.”
This attitude and mindset that you’re already there is a promissory note for success from your commitment to intentional action.
Even if you don’t win the final reward, the valuable lessons from your failures can never be taken from you.
This shortcut is open only for a journey paved with failures. It’s an airlift to the mountaintop from a plateau you’ve already reached. All you have to do then is stay at the peak mentally until the rest of you catches up physically.
It is the 2-second life-saving electric pulse after over 10 years of cardiology training.
HEALTH MATTERS
Not many chronic health conditions are ever reversible.
However…being overweight, out of shape, stressed out; suffering from sleep apnea and even Diabetes as complications of obesity: these are among the few ailments that readily forgive your prior mistakes and failures.
They are quite reversible, and the unhealthy medical consequences can improve or even disappear.
Warning: Beware of the “Devil Slide” about 3 to 6 months into successful weight loss.
Thanks to our biological hard-wiring, maybe for survival thousands of years ago, the body senses the initial weight loss and reacts mightily to gain it all back.
Body hormones and brain chemistry change signals to make you feel famished, eat more food than is needed for hunger, and hold on to every calorie you consume. So, most people gain the weight back and sometimes even more.
Not knowing this a normal biological reaction, people blame themselves for their “failure”. Many then give up.
Knowing this newfound medical fact, we can smartly overcome it. “We have ways”:
ACTIVITY
Whereas exercise alone is an inefficient way to lose weight, it is great for maintaining weight loss. So, upping your exercise time and/or intensity is an effective countermeasure until “the devil slides off” in a few weeks.
Of course, the time to gear up is before the weight rebound. So plan, schedule, and train ahead of time, and you won’t even feel the bounce from the rebound.
NUTRITION
A common excuse for over-indulgence is saying, “Oh, I’ll just burn that off by exercising more later.” You know you don’t have the extra time or energy.
Maxing out on your calorie credit card will bankrupt you. Use a debit card instead. Do extra workout or cut out bigger portions BEFORE your next indulgence. Then, you can eat enough to achieve a zero balance, penalty free.
For the stubborn weight rebound, if you can’t do more exercise, you may have to reduce your portions by more than the 1/4 you’ve been doing.
For health safety, don’t eat less than 1,000 calories a day (about half of the average normal intake).
Mix-and-match. Do a more-exercise, smaller-portion, and no-sugary-drink combo until the Devil Slide’ has slid away.
FOCUS
Prepare for the big setbacks, like the Devil Slide and upcoming special occasions. Set-forward your countermeasures as above to prevent a setback.
No need to compare your body with somebody else. Everybody is unique, just like everybody else. Your body is incomparable and nobody else’s business. Your failure or success in health is measured only against yourself.
Know your own body and work with it. Regular moderate activity, breathing exercise and similar mind-body practices are like “body whisperers” that help you get more in tune with your body, not only more in tone.
“If you’re hotter than me,
then I must be cooler than you.”
Anonymous
TAKEAWAYS
W
hile you file away your failures before next week’s posting, shine some light on it by listening to a free preview of this podcast. Enjoy, all at once or, better yet, one day at a time (2-3 minutes).
Good Night (Light)
(1) Light Spectrum
(3) Light Speed
(4) Light Show
(5) Light Unseen
(7) The Lighter Side
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Inspirational Quotes:
One who has not repeatedly endured the bitterness of failure cannot fully savor the sweetness of success.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Most great people have achieved their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
– Napoleon Hill
Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.
– Arianna Huffington
Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.
– Oprah Winfrey
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
– Henry Ford
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
– Henry Ford
I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
– Thomas Edison
The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…One step at a time.
– Joe Girard
If you think we are not meant to make mistakes – you are mistaken.
– Steve Bhaerman
Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.
– Denis Waitley
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
– Sam Levenson
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.
– Rumi
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WRITTEN BY
Tak C. Poon, MD, PharmD, ABHIM, FACC
Board-certified American Preventive Cardiologist now developer of a wellness blog and a lifestyle habit-forming app. www.metacardio.org
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