Fail Forward

Fireworks fade fast, but the question behind a national birthday sticks around: what do we do with the story we inherit, and the story we’re still writing? After a Fourth of July that felt unusually unified, I share a personal reflection on America’s 250 years and the surprising lesson it offers anyone chasing real change: you don’t need the perfect plan to begin. You need courage, movement, and the willingness to start again when it gets messy. 

From building a business to repairing a relationship, we talk about perseverance as a practice, not a personality trait. I dig into why success is rarely “luck,” why endless what-ifs keep us stuck on the sidelines, and why no technology, not even artificial intelligence, can replace the human touch of mentors, friends, parents, and the people who help us stand back up. If you’re looking for motivation, personal growth tools, and a mindset shift toward resilience, this is a grounded place to start. 

We also go deeper on history as a mirror, not a museum. A balanced view matters: honor courage and sacrifice while also acknowledging injustice and failure, because informed citizens and healthy families both depend on honesty. That leads to John Maxwell’s idea of “failing forward,” the trap of perfectionism, and the power of telling the truth, even when it makes us uncomfortable. I even point to Alcoholics Anonymous as a model for real transformation: progress begins by admitting there’s a problem. 

If any part of this hits home, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find Life Notes with Sheldon. What’s one area of your life where you’re ready to begin anyway?

Transcript

Welcome And A July Fourth Moment

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best you.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hello friends, and thank you for joining me on Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get you off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your very best self. We just celebrate the 4th of July in this amazing country, and I don't know what it was. Maybe it was 250 years, but it was the best 4th of July I maybe ever remember. It was just great. Something about turning this old as a nation really seemed to bring people together. At least for a little while. Going into Walmart, going into the Dollar General, just going to places, people were happy that day, and there seemed to be a joint collective spirit of celebration and thankfulness for this land of the free, this home of the brave, this amazing country that we live in.

America’s Experiment And Starting Anyway

SPEAKER_01 1:16

And I wrote a little something to share on that day, and I entitled it What Do I Think of America? So I want to share it with you, just share some of my thoughts. This morning I stepped into my backyard here in New Mexico and was reminded that it is still midsummer. The birds were singing, a gentle breeze drifted through the trees, and for a few precious moments there was nothing but peace. The temperature was warm enough to be comfortable and cool enough to be refreshing. It felt as though nature itself was whispering a hopeful promise of a day filled with sunshine, blue skies, and possibility. As we celebrate two hundred and fifty years of America, I found myself thinking about those first patriots and their families who literally gave everything they had to an extraordinary experiment. They had vision, they had courage, they had purpose. But they did not have every answer. There was no comprehensive roadmap, no detailed checklist for something that had never been done before, no historical blueprint to follow. What they attempted was unlike anything the world had ever seen, and yet they began, bit by bit, line upon line, step by step through blood, sweat, tears, tragedy, and triumph, courage and fear, victories and defeats they pressed forward. They remained faithful to a dream, not only for themselves, but for their children, their grandchildren, and generations that would never meet. Perhaps they even saw us or imagined us. One of the greatest lessons they left us is this. You do not have to have everything figured out before you begin. History is filled with people who simply believed something could be better. Whether it was the light bulb, the steam locomotive, life saving medical breakthroughs, the internet, or rockets carrying satellites into space with astonishing precision. Every great achievement began with someone willing to take the first uncertain step. They made mistakes, they failed, they learned and they tried again. Success was rarely luck. It was perseverance. I've watched people struggle with this, and if I'm honest, I've been one of them. It's easy to get trapped in endless what ifs, imagining everything that could go wrong until we never begin at all. But the founders of nations, founders of businesses, inventors, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and pioneers all seem to share one defining characteristic. Eventually they stopped waiting and started. So what is your dream? Maybe it's remodeling the home you've imagined for years, starting the business you've talked about, writing the book, inventing something new, going back to school, strengthening your family, or building a better future for your children and your children's children, whatever it is. Don't wait for the perfect plan because it doesn't exist. America, its very self, teaches us that the path to success is to begin. And then begin again. And begin and begin many more times if necessary. And when you get knocked down, stand back up, shake off the dust, and learn from it. Keep moving forward. No technology, not even artificial intelligence, remarkable as it is, will ever replace the human touch. A hug, a word of encouragement, a mentor, a teacher, a parent, a friend. When I think about America's greatness, I certainly think about our breathtaking national parks, our mountains, deserts, rivers, and skies. But more than anything, I think about the people, men and women who believed in something larger than themselves, and who, at their very best, sought God's guidance as they built this nation from the ground up. I believe that whenever we have sincerely sought God's wisdom and endeavored to follow His principles, we have advanced the most, and may we do the same today. I'm grateful for those who began, not only here in America, but throughout the world. Those who cured diseases, expanded knowledge, created opportunities, improved lives, and left the world better than they found it. And as we celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, I simply want to say thank you. Thank you, God. Thank you to those who sacrificed for the liberties we enjoy today. And thank you to this remarkable nation that, while never perfect, has given generations the opportunity to dream, to build, to serve, to worship, to create, and to begin and begin again. My hope is that this anniversary inspires each of us to be a little better, choose a little wiser, serve a little more, and perhaps inspire the next great leader, someone of character, courage, wisdom, and faith to help guide our nation into its next chapter. Happy 250th birthday, America. And in many ways, happy birthday to us all.

History As A Mirror For Growth

SPEAKER_01 7:15

The past is the only place where all the tests have already been graded. We can't change the answers, but we can learn from them whether we're talking about our own lives or the history of our nation. Forgetting the lessons doesn't erase the consequences. And history is more of a mirror, not just a museum. It isn't simply a collection of dates and names. It reflects who we are, what we've valued, where we've succeeded, and where we've fallen short. And looking into that mirror honestly can be uncomfortable. But it's where growth begins. Taking an honest look at our past, an honest look at the things we've done and haven't done, and honestly look at the things that we have avoided that have kept us from progressing. But one of the greatest things that keeps us from progressing is humility. No generation gets everything right. Every generation inherits wisdom from those before and leaves lessons for those who follow. Believing we're beyond learning from the past often sets us up to repeat it.

Fail Forward And Learn Faster

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Maxwell, leadership guru, John Maxwell, has a phrase that he likes to call failing forward. Failing forward. When we fail, let's fail forward. You know, and and we all fail. I mean, any of us that have tried to stick to a decent diet and start over again on Monday, we fail. Often. And we have to get back up and try. But when we fail, there's two ways we can approach it. The first and dysfunctional way is to give up. Oh, crud, I ate some chocolate and ice cream. I may as well just binge eat for the rest of the weekend and start over on Monday, right? Or, oh, I I I failed on this. I didn't study for this test and I failed it. I may as well quit school, right? Unproductive way to approach life when we fail. To guilt ourselves, to shame ourselves, or worse, to just give up, or to retreat from our pattern that we were in that was helping us to retreat from it where it's harder to get back to. There's those ways that we can dysfunctionally approach failure. And then there's John Maxwell's approach of failing forward. Now, the key element to failing forward is asking, what can I learn from this? What is the universe trying to teach me? What is this consequence, this wall I bonked my head on trying to teach me? What can I learn from it? And we start to take this university approach to life that the world is a university and we can learn and we can grow. And one of the greatest ways we can learn and grow is from our failures, particularly our failures of the past, and learning from the past. And recognizing it honestly, and being true about what our past is, not sugarcoating it. Because when we try and sugarcoat our own past or our nation's past or history, we miss out on the most important nuggets of truth and understanding. Because, friends, so often it's the hard things in life. It's the hard things we went to, it's the things we learned the hard way, the things we did that maybe we are ashamed of and don't want to talk about. Those are the things that often taught us the most if we turned away from those and if we learn from them. We enjoy great freedoms in this country on a massive scale. This is not what the world was like years ago. It just it just wasn't. There was feudal society and and this this freedom that we enjoy is a relatively new concept and new gift in the history of humanity. It doesn't seem like it. It just seems like we've been enjoying this gift forever, but it's relatively new historically and it carries responsibility. Free society depends on informed citizens. Understanding history helps us recognize the cost of the freedoms we enjoy and reminds us that they require care, participation, and accountability. So as we look back on our own lives and on our nation's history and our history, it's important to honor courage, sacrifice, and innovation and perseverance alongside acknowledging injustice, mistakes, and failures. A balanced view of history is more accurate than one that focuses only on triumph or only on tragedy. And I've seen this on the national stage when people want to talk, say, about our nation's history when it pertains to, say, something like slavery or concentration camps that we've set up in World War II or any controversial issue. Sometimes we get uncomfortable and we get defensive. And I've seen people say, Well, that's not our full history. What about all the good things we've done? Well, no one's discounting that. At least they shouldn't be. To explore the difficult, challenging parts of history is not necessarily to discount all of the good. But if we're just saying all of the good, we've become this yes man in history, and yes men do not progress, they do not help society, they do not learn, they do not grow. When we approach our mistakes and our past with an attitude of introspection, of asking what we can learn, and finding out how not to repeat, we pave the way for an amazing and productive future by inquiring what happened, why did it happen? How did we go wrong? Why did we go wrong? And how can we avoid that pitfall in the future? And if we want to sugarcoat our own history or our national story, we're gonna miss out on those incredible opportunities. One, to recognize things like tyranny when they come rearing their ugly head again, injustice when it comes rearing its ugly head again. Nobody wants to talk about injustice when they aren't experiencing it. And if you're not experiencing it now, then I commend you. But it's a fairly rare thing in society to experience the justice and freedom that we have right now. We have to treasure it. We have to understand what a blessing it is. Our personal stories matter in history very much as well. Many of us carry regrets, failures, and painful memories. We don't have to let those define us, but neither do we have to pretend that they never happened. See, in life, in our own histories, in the history of the United States of America, often the chapters we'd rather skip are the ones that teach us the most. The chapters we'd rather gloss over and skip are the ones that often teach us resilience, about compassion, and about wisdom. There's a couple of quotes that I want to share with you. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it by George Santayana. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill, I love that. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. You know, there's these sayings, don't look in the rearview mirror, look in the windshield in life. But, you know, sometimes it's important to look in the rearview mirror, looking back about where you were, where you came, how you got there, and avoiding those pitholes and pitfalls and potholes, right? The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. And I would add, the deeper, the deeper inward you can look, the deeper forward we are likely to see. Are we sugarcoating our own histories? Are we glossing over the most difficult chapters? Are we forgetting the things that we did wrong that caused us great pain, suffering, agony, and maybe even peace in our families and relationships? We have to remember the good, but we also have to remember the bad. We have to remember those things we enjoyed, and we have to remember those things that caused us pain, or else how will we avoid them? Not dwell on them, but be aware and not pretend like they never existed. But hopefully we fail forward and we learn from them because through learning we can help others. I've

Drop The Perfection Mask To Connect

SPEAKER_01 15:57

watched people parent, and I am not the perfect parent, but I do try to be an honest parent. If I think my kids are doing something really stupid, I'm probably gonna tell them in a productive way. But one thing I didn't want to do with our kids was sugarcoat my history, was pretend like I never experienced some of the challenges that they did, of peer pressure and of making the right decision and of other things. You know, and I've watched parents sometimes feel that they have to have this shroud of perfection draped over them in a fake manner that makes them feel to their children that they are somehow beyond reproach, that they never sinned, that they never fell, that they never messed up. And what this does is it creates that shroud really as a barrier from connecting, from being able to connect with your kids, sometimes showing weakness, sometimes showing that you struggle too, sometimes showing that you had some of the same problems, maybe with your parents or your brothers and sisters. Sharing that can help you relate to them. But pretending like you never went through any of that and none of it ever happened creates this barrier of connection. So if you're parenting in this way of thinking you have to pretend like your past was perfect, you might be missing out on ways to connect, ways to teach, way to relate, and ways to grow together. And maybe you're doing this as a person, maybe you're doing this at work or in your home, maybe you're doing this in your church, maybe you feel so much pressure to be perfect, to hide your sins, to hide your weakness, that you create and carry this tremendous burden on your shoulders. The burden of perfection is heavy and costly, and it takes great puppet strings to pull to keep that shroud around you. And when you take that off and you stop trying to pretend or convince yourself or others that you're perfect, you will find that you will be able to connect with others in a way you never had before. You will find you'll be able to connect with yourself in a way that you never had before. And you will find that honesty is the very best policy. Honesty is the way forward, friends.

Honesty Humility And Real Recovery

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the greatest success stories of any psychological endeavor or program. The AA program is one of the very most and highly effective programs to help people improve their lives. And the very first step, the very first step is to recognize that you have a problem. Friends, isn't that the very first step in our humanity? Isn't that the very first step in our theology? Isn't that the very first step of progress? Recognizing that we have a problem and recognizing that we need help to understand it, and recognizing that we need help to go through it. It teaches us humility. Yes, we are fragile, we are fallen, we are weak. Yes, we do need help. Yes, we do need brotherhood, we need camaraderie. We need to be built up by those around us, but we cannot build ourselves and each others up if we are surrounded by this shred of false perfectionism. Because no one can relate to that. Nobody can relate to a perfect person because there isn't one, and there hasn't been one. Well, except him. That was a long time ago, right? There isn't one on the earth today. And the good news is that you don't have to be either. That's not the expectation. Now, if you're a brain surgeon and you're working on me, I hope you're pretty darn close. Or if you're flying a 737 and I happen to be in the mid-value plus section where I fly, I hope you're pretty darn perfect at what you're doing. But for general life, we're not perfect. We're frail, we're fallen, we are quick to quick to wrath, quick to anger, quick to judgment. We need help, friends. And some of the greatest help that we need is from our very selves. To start being honest about who we really are, start being honest about where we came from and how we learned from it. And once we start this process, start sharing that with others. Start sharing it with your children, start sharing it with your spouse, with those you go to church with and work with. Start telling your story because I am willing to bet that your story is one of triumph. I really believe that none of us go through life without some type of immense trial. And sometimes it's a visible one, right? There's people with cerebral palsy, there's people with um tremendous handicaps, there's people who can't walk. But more often these great trials are things that the eye can't see. They're things that are deeper than that, sometimes even as deep as our soul. And those are often every bit, if not more, in some cases, trying than the physical ones that we see. And when we start to recognize those, go a little bit deeper into our past inside ourselves and understand why they are there and where they come from, be honest that we have them, we can start to work on them, we can start to improve, we can start to fail forward, and we can help others up along the way to be honest, to recognize they have a problem and to help them through it.

The Truth Gets Uncomfortable First

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One quote I want to share is that the truth will set you free, but first it will make you uncomfortable. Again, the truth will set you free, but first it will make you uncomfortable. Friends, maybe we're too comfortable. Maybe we need to get uncomfortable, maybe we need to go talk to that person, reach out to our neighbor, reach into our past, reach forward with greater goals into our future. If we're living a life that's too comfortable, there's a high chance that we're not growing. And if we're not growing and learning, what are we doing? Because that's all we can really take with us what we've learned, our legacy, and the relationships that we've had. And any good relationship is based on truth. And so is any good historical analysis or historical story. So as you tell yours, and as you tell the story of our nation, to your children, to your family, and to their children, their children's children, tell it with honesty. Be honest about the hard times, be honest about the bad decisions, be honest about the good ones. And learn to fail forward. Stop being so hard on yourself. Recognize that a failure is often an opportunity if we'll let it be. And you know, another great opportunity was being able to talk with you today and share this moment together. I'm grateful for it. And wherever you are listening, I hope you're well, that you have a great weekend, that you enjoy this beautiful summer weather, and that uh you take some time to be honest

Closing Thoughts And Weekly Reminder

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with yourself and also to be kind with yourself. Till next time, Life Notes with Sheldon.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

You have been listening to LifeNotes with Sheldon. Listen every week for a brand new Note of Life. We hope that we have given you a way to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best view.