If you live a life of ambition, where you are prepared to take on new challenges, where you strive to be a good leader you will, at times, experience failure. Or at the very least disappointment. The important thing is to get past it, learn from it and move on.

When I started to think about this blog a few days ago my latest disappointment did not exist. Although someone or something was preparing it for me. I was going to write about about the analogy between tweaking my approach to knocking out 75 wall balls  in the Hyrox competition I was training for with the leading of others to a new way of doing things. 

But then disappointment hit and with it a huge feeling of failure. It may seem very trivial in the great scheme of things but it has brought a lot of emotions bubbling to the surface.

I got my heat time for Hyrox. The Open Women’s heats are from 17.00-18.50hrs. I had wrongly assumed that the slower competitors would go off in the earlier heats so that they would be finished by the time the PRO athletes went out. I was wrong. I’m in the 18.50 heat. By the time I’m coming into the last two work stations I could be the only woman left. My vision of completing my race before the PRO athletes went out has been replaced by coming in after them and turning the lights off.

It’s not what I signed up for. I expected to be inconspicuous. I expected to be the slowest but not to be last over the finish line. 

So I’m probably going to withdraw from the event. I was up for being uncomfortable but it was going to be in a safe place. In the mix, surrounded by other female ‘open’ competitors. Being uncomfortable in an unsafe place (being the only woman surrounded by PRO male athletes) is a step too far. Currently the need to protect myself from the humiliation of running on my own, being conspicuous, attracting patronising comments, is greater than my feelings of failure in withdrawing after weeks of training. 

But the one thing that I can claim for myself is tenacity. Failure has often reinforced my commitment to an idea, a change. There have been occasions in my career when I’ve  been caught up in the tumbleweed that has drifted past my suggestion. But I’ve not let it go. I’ve tried again. And again. Occasionally I’ve experienced criticism even abuse but I’ve not given up. My commitment has slowly gained traction and ultimately a following. 

In a previous blog post, Retire with Passion I wrote about listing my achievements as a way of celebrating my life. Many of these achievements had failure and disappointment threaded through them but ultimately they became something to be proud of. And success tends to erase what went before.

It has been a difficult few days. It has generated a range of emotions that I need to work through. Some I’m finding difficult to label. Failure is always an uncomfortable place to be but it can be where the most learning takes place.