There is no such thing as failure – the only REAL failure is a lack of action.
We all have goals and dreams in life, and when we are on our own, when we are planning our lives they seem feasible – ambitious perhaps, but we tell ourselves that with hard work we can achieve them.
The next day however, when we get into the real world and it is time to take action they seem a lot more difficult.
It is easy to sit at home and plan, and imagine yourself taking action, but when we get out into the real world there are many things which might hold us back.
Often these are just excuses we tell ourselves, to cushion ourselves from the reality that we just didn’t take action.
The reasons vary – from worrying what people will think of us, to not knowing exactly what to do, or pretending that the circumstances are not exactly right… All of these reasons when you break them down usually come to a fear of failure.
We are a proud race, we don’t like to admit defeat, or admit that we can’t do something.
We often protect our ego’s at all costs, and sometimes we trick ourselves to do this, subconsciously reasoning that if we don’t try we don’t fail, we will be successful as soon as we try tomorrow, or next time the circumstances are right… only tomorrow never comes, and the circumstances never quite fit. We move on to a different goal, and the pattern continues.
Break The Cycle!
If you keep doing the same things you will get the same results. To achieve something different we need to do something different, and this often involves getting out of our comfort zones and putting our pride on the line.
When you take the first steps in any pursuit – whether it is going for a job interview, volunteering to make a presentation often failure is inevitable. What really matters is how you perceive it – some people embrace failure – see it as a learning process and something they can learn from.
You need to frame it like this within your mind – to accept failure as inevitable and to actually embrace it. Failure is the first step on the path to success, and it is very rare that anyone who achieves massive success in any pursuit has had a clear path there, free from failure.
People Who Are Successful Always Failed At First!
On the way to success people who are industry leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs, they will have experienced failure on a massive scale. They will have encountered many obstacles and overcome them.
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| Failure |
| When your Best isn't just good enough |
This can be seen in all areas of life:
• In the entrepreneur who makes a loss in his first year of business but goes on to sell his business after 5 years for several million dollars.
• In the person who tries to learn the skill of public speaking – they go through many sessions and hours of sweating, shaking, and stuttering through their performances before it starts to come naturally to them.
• In the person who finally loses the weight they have carried around for years. They spend years trying different diets, learning what works for them and what doesn’t and through persistence and trying again and again they find something that works really well for them.
• In the dancer who wants to dance on Broadway – they go to 100s of auditions, and in the end they get just one chance. The 99 other parts they went for are meaningless once they achieve their dream
– it is all just part of the process.
There is also the analogy of the “failure rocket”: A rocket flying to the moon “fails” every few seconds – it is constantly just a millimetre off course, over the whole course of the journey this would mean it would miss the moon completely. However, the scientists constantly adjust the trajectory and put the rocket back on course. Eventually the rocket reaches the moon safely and the whole world sees this as a massive success.
You have to think the same way – to see your “failures” as feedback, not only as inevitable episodes on the path to success, but as beneficial lessons which you need to learn from in order to be successful.
Once you do this you lose the fear of failure and start taking positive steps towards your goals. Once you do this process once and achieve success at the end then it will become second nature to you – you will live your life by this rule and measure your success by the failure you have to go through.
Remember, if it was easy, and there was no failure required then everyone would be doing it and therefore the reward wouldn’t be that great. 