Last night I fell.
Hard.
Like cartoon character slipping on a banana peel hard. I literally went heals over head and came crashing down on the ceramic tile floor in my kitchen.
My wife legitimately thought I might have broken my hip. Getting out of bed this morning took work and a lot of deep breathing.
I am just glad I know how to fall well. It’s one of the first things you learn in any martial art that involves anything on the ground. You have to know how to fall in order to not get severely hurt. My boys first started learning this valuable lesson at the ages of 4 & 3.
Seriously – it’s that important that we start with the Little Dragons.
Having had the last 24 hours to sit quietly and really think about last night’s incident, I kept coming back to how ‘fall’ and ‘fail’ are so similar and mitigating a fall is a great metaphor for mitigating a failure.
And let’s be real, all of us are going to fall and all of us are going to fail…..but how you we fall (fail) well?
1) Expect it.
Not the specific fall or specific failure but in our lives we should expect to have times we stumble or slip. It’s going to happen eventually, so…..
2). Prepare and Practice
The reason I am writing this from my dining room table instead of the hospital is because I have practiced falling thousands of times. What’s known as a ‘Break Fall’ just comes instinctually to me and I executed a side break fall last night when I found myself unexpectedly airborne . (Ironically, I nearly broke my arm on this fall because I slammed it into the kitchen counter trying to execute said break fall)
Am I suggesting you should practice failure? In a way, yes.
Visualize what could go wrong. Visualize how you would get through it. Strategize a game plan and think through the weaknesses.
Don’t wish for failure but be ready for it if it shows it’s face.
3). Pay attention and avoid danger.
The best way to mitigate a fall is to not fall at all. Pay attention to your surroundings, have good situational awareness, act proactively to mitigate potential hazards.
This would be the step I completely missed. I was too busy cleaning up after an amazing family dinner to notice the recently mopped tile floor. Spills get cleaned up and floors get mopped. I just was not aware enough to register it and slow my roll through the kitchen clean up.
Dinner was amazing though (pics below – highly recommend the Nobu – Miami cookbook)
3). Protect what’s critical, Sacrifice what’s not.
Land on something non-critical, not your head. In the case of a rear break fall, you want to land on your glute vs the back of your neck, your lower back or the head itself.
Thus the reason my right glute is extremely sore this morning. I would much rather deal with a bone bruise on my hip than a concussion or worse.
When it comes to failure, pay hyper attention to the parts of your life that cannot fail. They deserve your attention and protection, it’s the others that may not get as much attention you might be willing to sacrifice should something go sideways.
If everything is important – nothing is. Protect the important stuff, sacrifice the rest (if you must)
4). Stop the momentum.
A break fall doesn’t stop when your butt hits the ground, you have to stop the moment so your head does not snap back and slam into the ground.
As you fall you tuck your chin, brace your abs in a C-seat position and as your body makes contact with the ground, you slam both of your arms into the ground. Stopping the moment caused by the force of gravity with the force being created by your arms.
This was the part that nearly broke my arm as I slammed mine into the corner of the countertop vs the floor…but we are still all good.
In failure, when you recognize there is a problem, mitigate the problem and do not let it grow. Stop the momentum so you can…
5). GET BACK UP!!
Failure is only permanent if you let it be. I’ll end with one of my favorite translations from Confucius ;
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
– Confucius
Learn to fall (fail) well.