Failure vs. Losing

5/4/2012

I read this quote this morning and thought that is was quite appropriate for the blog of the day. So here is to a great weekend to each of you (dog showing or not)!
"There's a difference between failure and losing. Failure is not losing. Losing when you've tried your hardest or when you've done what you thought was right is not failure. That's courage. Failure is losing your focus and your commitment, a personal misdeed or not living up to your personal expectations. Nobody else will define your failure and nobody else will define your success. You do that." — Mike Flood, speaker of the Nebraska Legislature at the University of Nebraska at Kearney spring commencement, May 4, 2012

1 Comment

Heather Henisey link

5/7/2012 07:11:40 am

I was looking back though your archives today, as I do not get to visit your blog daily and I found this post. I love stuff like this that helps me mentally sort my thoughts and make things clearer, things that help with were I am now and were I want to be.

Over the past year I have been working on myself to become a better sportsman and a better competitor, someone I would want to be around and someone my dogs would be proud to be shown by. As we all know the amount of self confidence one must have to be successful on the ring is sometimes hard to compartmentalize when we loose but this personally helped.

Yes its easy to throw out a congratulations to that 1st place but I want mine to come from a place of true happiness for the person and not a require front since “the judge is looking.”

Personally I think is should go more like this…

There's a difference between failure and losing. Loosing is not a failure. Failure is losing your focus, your commitment; it’s not living up to your personal expectations, to your full potential. Failure is giving up on yourself and your goals. Its giving in to your personal demons.

Losing is when you have tried your hardest but your hardest is just not good enough. Loosing is not a reason to quit; it is a reason to find that little bit more. There is no shame in loosing; loosing is only courage. Courage to put yourself out there and hope for the best. Nobody else will define your failure and nobody else will define your success. Only you can do that.

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I am Amy Novak and live in central Nebraska with 7 of the most wonderful dogs win the world. OK....so that is just a personal opinion! 6 of them just happen to be Border Collies with the 7th to be a very loving, very old Lab. I am by no means a professional dog person, although I do consider it my hobby, second job, and something I truely enjoy in my life. I do work full time in what I call the "real world" as a farm computer technician for a local John Deere dealership. And I am by no means a computer geek....I just get paid to be one! I am a weekend dog show warrior. I am an owner-handler. I will occassionally hire out a handler for ringside pickup, but for the most part do 95% of the showing myself.

Failure vs. Losing

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