Certainty

There are few things in life of which I am certain. Here is one:

When faced with any challenge, there are more ways to succeed than we believe, and more ways to fail than we can possibly imagine.

This applies to everything from hitting a ball to curing disease.

This is not intended to be an intimidating thought, it is a liberating one. Each failure expands our understanding of the elements that need to come together in order to secure success. This is the key not to accept failure, but rather to accept failure as an interim outcome… and making sure it doesn’t kill you.

Many of us devote a lot of time toward thinking about how things can go wrong. This is important for many reasons, and if done with purpose can help lead to better thinking about solutions. But it can also be a trap of negativity. No problem has a single solution. The paths to success are many and the more of them we are able to imagine and explore, the better we understand the challenges and the more likely we are to succeed.