Dad Advice

I gave some advice to someone recently, and they referred to it as “dad advice.” I’m choosing to take that as high praise, and I thought I’d share the advice here.

It was this: sometimes you have to do something that you know will fail, because that’s the only way you’ll move forward and learn something.

I’d like to bring up another piece of advice that isn’t original to me, but I know first-hand how true it is: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Those two things are related. Hopefully, you’ve never been punched in the face – and hopefully, you never will be! But I can tell you with 100% certainty that the first time you get a really solid haymaker to your moneymaker, there’s no way to be prepared for it. You can have all the training in the world, be an excellent martial artist, be in great shape, whatever – if you’ve never actually felt that impact and the primal fear and hurt and rage that comes with it, all that stuff goes out the window.

Which means, if you want to be a good fighter, at some point you have to just get punched in the face. You know it will hurt, you know it will suck, but there’s just no way to move past that hurdle without experiencing it.

You can do it in a controlled environment – you can be in a sparring gym, with friends, etc. But you can’t avoid it completely.

That’s true of almost every skill. At some point you just have to fail as hard as you can, while trying as hard as you can, to learn that lesson. Even if you won’t get the result you’re aiming for, you will take the sting of future failures away – and that’s success all on its own.