Failure.

Not a word to inspire excitement…

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

~ C.S. Lewis

Everyone fails.  Failure is as inevitable as change.

What is necessary to combat failure, is the encouragement to try again.  Encourage your spouse as they fail – and then encourage them to try once more.

What’s the secret?

Those who move forward, see failure as:

• a stepping stone, not a tomb-stone
• a motivation, not an excuse
• a badge of courage, not a sign of weakness

The way to encourage through and beyond failure begins with your perception of failure.  You can’t change your spouse’s view of failure.  But you can influence them with your attitude.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt had an interesting view on failure.  Even though he had a long list of accomplishments, I imagine he also encountered many failures.  His quotes echo the sentiment that it is better to try and fail, than to never try:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

and

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Fail forward.

Our spouse is not a super-hero.  There’s no cape hiding in the closet.  Our Love is a flawed human who will make mistakes.  (Guess what – that’s us too!)  But we can encourage our Love to be bold and try again.

We are not made to be timid.  Celebrate the valiant striving, the great daring – and the dust, sweat and blood.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.”

~ 2Timothy 1:7 (Amplified Bible)

You can influence your spouse to fail forward.  

It’s all in your attitude.

How do you view failure?