Trails both old and new have great value.
I am sure you have heard this phrase before or at least something similar,
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I tend to agree with what Ralph is trying to tell us, but many of us can forget the great values we can learn from trails that have already been made. Time and time again people repeat actions of the past. They know the downfalls of certain actions, but we seem to never learn. We think we can do better than the last person. We think we can succeed where they failed, but before you decide to take their trail and remove the forest that has grown in, try to learn why they failed. Don’t just go in with guns blazing. There is nothing wrong with renewing a trail that has been made before. Whether it’s trying to start a restaurant, writing a new book or designing a new technology, we all can learn from the failures of others.
It’s important to learn from our failures too.
Once you have learned what caused the pioneers to fail, take it to heart. How can you prevent that from happening to yourself? At the same time, be prepared with the fact that you will probably fail at some point. Failure is not a bad thing. Without failures we truly are not trying hard enough. We have to get uncomfortable once in a while and fail. Failure is where growth happens because it is the most real feeling of what you don’t want to do. When you fail yourself, you really understand what it means. You don’t just read it in a book or a in a magazine or on a blog. It is a gut check that resonates in your brain for the rest of your life.
Don’t just try to blaze new trails all the time. Walk down the old ones to see where they didn’t go.
