Trying vs. DOING

I had an interesting thought yesterday at lunch. i was eating with my boyfriend and we were talking about plans to go to his house this weekend (on a lake and with all sorts of fun lakey stuff). He was a little worried about his parents being worried about me and his mom (who's a counselor) noticing that something was wrong.

I said that I would try to do my best and be as normal as possible.

Well, that got me thinking. Isn't "try" by definition allowing for failure? We try all these things. I'm trying to recover. I'm trying to have a normal meal with his family. Did I seriously, when I said that, think i would succeed at a normal meal with his family.

No!

The verbiage puts a certain mindset in place when we go towards specific challenges. Almost like allowing ourselves to fail. How about "I'm going to go and eat a normal dinner with your family"?

Failure is not an option people! We need to watch and not get caught up in the language and the connotations that most words have. Connotations that we don't even think about! My old Doc used to say that our race, especially the highly developed language center of the brain, is too developed for our own good. I may have meant the best when I said I would try, but just the words changed my mindset going into the challenge.

Go into challenges thinking that you WILL succeed. DECIDE. DO. Like in Apollo 13; "Failure is not an option."