Families often ask me, “What if we fail?”
I hear it all the time, a mother or father, husband or wife completely paralyzed in a sort of apathy about taking action because of all the potential failures running through their mind.
“What if we fail?” “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if he says ‘No’?” …”WHAT WILL WE WE DO THEN?!” It’s a kind of, “Why even try?” frame of mind.
I’ll tell you why.
Because you’ll regret not trying more than trying. That will always be true. The win will belong to the person who fights for what is right despite being beaten down and punctured by the sword of failure again and again. The win goes to the one who get’s back up and dusts himself off one more time than he fails. THAT is what good interventions are made of: effort, and then more effort, and again. They are made of calm, deliberate planning, finely tuned execution, a readiness for fireworks and preparing a host of contingencies.
Think if you were the one who needed help, and at the end of the day, your family simply taking action would have worked to pull you out of the hole you had dug for yourself? What if it saved you – but that day never arrived, it never came because those in whose capable hands rested the ability and the means never tried because they were afraid to fail?
What if – and this is perhaps the most common scenario – what if they never came simply because they were waiting for “the right moment,” the “right time,” but because life got in the way they decided it would be easier for everyone to “let things play out,” or to wait until later, after the vacation, after the court date, after the doctors appointment…easier to wait, not to start the very thing that would have saved your life, if only…
So that’s why you face your fear and move forward anyway, why you look it straight in the eye and become fear’s BFF. You’re going to tuck your head down and put your arms up and make the goal, regardless of what may come. As difficult as it may be, the answer to the question, “What if we fail?” is – you get back up and try again.
I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard from families who have “failed” at doing an intervention when they simply gave after one meeting. Someone in a self help group somewhere let them off the hook by telling them that, “He has to ‘hit bottom’ first,” or, “He’s just not ready,” or, “He has to admit he has a problem or reach for help on his own before treatment will work.” None of those things is true. Not only am I living proof of it but the many interventions I’ve done where none of those things happened and yet a successful outcome was reached all prove that the wrong thing to do is nothing, regardless what your friends or family may be certain they know. Unless the person you’re getting advice from has done a hundred or more interventions successfully (I’ve done somewhere over 400), he probably has no idea what the potential strategies really are.
And if you need help, get it. Don’t flail around or convince yourself that because your cousin Rudy did an intervention once on his uncle that he somehow knows what he’s talking about, or that you on your own with family members who lack experience is somehow a good idea. I have done literally hundreds of interventions and before that I was an addict for over two decades so I do know what I’m talking about. Call anytime for a no pressure, 100% free consultation.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
~ Franklin Roosevelt
“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
~ Japanese Proverb
