If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

So that’s three times that you’re trying, right?  You with me?

This was my motto growing up.  I heard it one time and thought to myself, ‘Great idea!  I’ll try, try again until I get it right!”

This is a fantastic idea, in theory.  It can get pretty monotonous, and downright disheartening,  when you continuously do something, putting forth the effort, only to fail at it.

It is extremely ambitious to have this be your life’s mantra, which is great!  You should definitely have high expectations for yourself.  Yet, as always, everything in moderation.

If your expectations are too high and you force yourself to keep at it, whatever “it” may be,  even when it appears futile, you may end up beating yourself up and discourage yourself from exerting effort in a different area, in the future.

Don’t forget:

• that as productive as this cliche is meant to be, being an extremist about this may be detrimental.

And

• that Einstein’s definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results!

So, if you are having a tough time with those word problems in your high school calculus class’ homework assignment, try to solve them. Then, try coming back to them again.  And then, one more time.  If you still cannot make heads or tails of it, walk away, at least for now.  Sleep on it.  Ask your parent. Look at the answer in the back of the book and try to work backwards from it.  Give it another 3 shots and if you’re still stumped, it’s ok.  Go into class tomorrow, without it done, and be proud to show your teacher your efforts and not too proud to ask them for help.

After the 3rd time, you need to either decide that it’s good enough or to walk away and come back another time to try, try, try again,

or run…

In the words of Kenny Rogers, “You gotta learn to play it right. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em. Know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run.”

you gotta know when to walk away…

But don’t be hard on yourself or lose faith in yourself.  Though it may not be working out right now, perhaps if you sleep on it, take a breather, ask someone else’s perspective, etc, you’ll be able to get it later.  Perhaps not.  And you have to be ok with the results, either way.  Let it go if it doesn’t work out.

I believe that what I’ve learned over the course of my life is that the effort and the willingness, not necessarily in that order, will lead to success; if not in this particular venture, then in another!