Don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve been on a bit of a “trying” kick lately. Pondering and ruminating about the whole idea of trying, the importance of trying, the risks of trying, the rewards of trying, the ratio of failures to successes for anyone who attempts to try anything.

Tina and I were talking about trying yesterday, and how perhaps in our day and age there may be a little too much emphasis on licking our wounds after we’ve fallen off the horse and perhaps not enough encouragement to just get back on the damn horse, lest the fear of falling snowballs into the paralysis of no longer trying to ride.

Trying, I’m also coming to understand, is in large part how I judge the prospects, the projects, and the people in my life. Some of you are saying, “Dean, you shouldn’t judge people.” Oh, stop. Of course I judge people. We all judge people. Of course there are a lot of ways we shouldn’t judge people but I will tell you I am unapologetically comfortable with and have no intention to stop judging people in this one way … whether or not they’re trying.

I’ve simply decided life is just too short to spend it with people who aren’t trying. If you are trying to, as they say, “phone it in” with me then you can expect that I will being hanging up. And I don’t care how many times you’ve tried and failed. Fall off the horse again and again. I don’t care. As long as you keep learning from each fall and keep climbing back on I’ve got your back.

It seems to me that for imperfect, ignorant, and often completely overwhelmed creatures like us, the real magic of life is in the trying. I’ve tried and failed at so many things there’s absolutely no way to keep count. I am not living my life’s master plan. I’m navigating the best I can after a hundred storms and a thousand failures shifted my course a thousand times. The proudest thing I will tell you about myself is this … fool that I am, I just keep getting back on the horse.

Could the secret to a truly successful life be just that simple? Just keep trying? I don’t know. Perhaps. I really think it’s in there somewhere. Not wanting to try or thinking about trying, but really actually trying.

I love this quote from the famously imperfect but truly great Winston Churchill … “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

But I’ll leave you with an even better one. One of my all time favorites by the poet Maya Angelou …

“If you're going to live, live at all, your business is trying.”

Life is rich my friends. I know you’re scared. I am too. I know you’ve failed so many times. I have too. But life is filled with so many great and wondrous things. Learning, growing, travel, adventure, building, loving, friendships, family, music, food, sex, hobbies, skills, projects, creativity … I don’t care how good or bad you are at some of them, don’t surrender any of them.

Keep trying.

“If you're going to live, live at all, your business is trying.”

Keep trying, and when the last day comes and all your trying is done, despite the innumerable failures and not ending up where you planned to go, I’m confident you’ll find you’ve succeeded at building yourself a beautiful life.