My son does weight training at the gym on our rooftop.
One day I saw him lifting heavy dumbbells and doing bicep curls. In the last repetition of his set, he struggled hard to complete the rep.
I stepped forward to help, but he shook his head — determined to finish on his own. He couldn’t complete the repetition.
Curious, I asked him why he hadn’t chosen a lighter weight so he could finish all his reps. His answer struck me: “I intentionally took the weight that would lead me to failure in the last rep.”
That was a lesson in itself. If you are not failing on the last rep, it means the weight was too light, the challenge too small. Growth begins where comfort ends — every rep before the last is just preparation, but the one you cannot finish is the one that truly transforms you.
Failure is not defeat; it’s proof that you pushed yourself beyond your limits, and that is where strength, endurance, and progress are born.
I wondered how true this is in the professional world as well. Too often, we choose safe goals to avoid failure — and in doing so, we stay average. We celebrate the comfort of “completed reps” in our careers: meeting modest targets, delivering predictable results, staying within the safe zone.
But real breakthroughs rarely come from safety. They come when we set audacious goals that scare us, that carry a genuine risk of failure. Because even if we fall short, we land far ahead of where small, comfortable goals would have taken us.
Failure in such pursuits is not a loss; it is a badge of courage, proof that we dared to reach higher than mediocrity. Playing it safe might keep us consistent, but chasing the impossible is what truly elevates us.
So the next time you set a goal — in the gym or in life — ask yourself: is it light enough to finish comfortably, or heavy enough to change you?
