Falling
Photo by Millicent Leandra on Unsplash
When I started writing this post, I had just finished my second snowboard run of the season. As I flew down the black diamond, smiling and having the time of my life, someone in front of me took a sharp turn. I called out, “On your left! On your left!” but they either didn’t hear me or didn’t have the control to stop. I carved hard to avoid them, caught an edge, and down I went.
It was a small fall, nothing dramatic, and the snow was so perfect it didn’t even hurt. Yet still, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take me down a few pegs. I started to question my abilities and had to fight the urge to slow down or give up altogether. I let that hesitation stay with me for the rest of the day. Then that night, I watched the Olympics.
I watched these women who seem to defy gravity, fear, and the laws of physics all at once. They are considered experts. Phenoms. The best in the world. These are the people I would expect to do it perfectly and yet the more I watched the more I saw them fall. In fact, the woman who won gold in the women’s halfpipe this year - Choi Gaon, a 17‑year‑old from South Korea - took a brutal fall on her very first run. She crashed so hard she nearly didn’t make it to her second run. But she got back up, recalibrated, and by her third run she delivered the performance of her life and won gold.
Falling isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s often proof you’re doing it right.
If we play it safe, will we fall less? Probably. But if we don’t push our boundaries then we’ll never know what we’re truly capable of because the fall doesn’t tell us our limits; it’s what we do after the fall, the choice to give up or try again, that tells us who we really are.
As you head into the week, ask yourself: are you holding back because you’re afraid of the fall? Where are you hesitating? What might happen if you stopped playing it so safe and really went for it?
May this be the week you trust yourself enough to lean forward instead of pulling back; and when you inevitably fall, may you rise with a little more clarity, a little more grit, and the conviction to try again.
