ilDo you live a life of safety?
Are there things you want to do, but are afraid that if you fail you will be laughed at, mocked and feel like a loser?
If you live within your comfort zone, then you haven’t experienced life for what it is.
Life has ups and downs
Fear of Failure…
Showing fear of failure to such an extent that you won’t take on any challenges and risks shows that in many ways you have failed – at life.
With my personal failures, I have experienced times where I have been humbled by others, times being humiliated, and those times all I wanted to do was disappear…
Then there was that one moment I hit rock bottom and couldn’t see a way out.
But I have been healed by determination not to quit and the passing of time.
From these experiences, I gained mental toughness to keep trying new things.
Every time I failed I bounced back better than before.
This is what I have learned about failure by living life:
Grieve your mistakes…
When failures happen, you think about them – a lot.
It’s perfectly acceptable and natural to grieve your failures if you learn from them.
When a relationship broke down, I spent a long time grieving what I had lost, thinking I would be alone forever.
But a benefit was I found out who my true friends were, established what I wanted from future relationships and moved on.
True friends are there for you
And move on…
Moving on is important, people relive failure just as much as past glory.
This just helps feed that fear more.
I failed my driving test,… a lot.
This me and all I could think whenever I sat behind that wheel was how much of a failure I was.
So, I stopped – but the failure consumed me and all I thought about was what a pathetic loser I was because I couldn’t drive.
I only resolved the issue when I pushed myself to take the risk, and after nine years of failing to move on, I finally passed my test.
Don’t strive for perfection
People who fear failure imagine everything to be perfect. I have single friends who dream of the perfect “one”, being the right place, the right time, the right person.
If you follow the perfect mindset, then you will never take any risks.
Recently I invested in the stock market, I was waiting for the time to buy but ever since I have been an adult there have always been terrorists, change in political scope and uncertainty in the market making it a bad time.
In reality, there would never be the perfect time to buy.
Risk can pay off
No ones cares
Many people’s fear of failure is the humiliation they imagine. But the truth is no one cares about your failure.
Once I fancied myself as a stand-up comedian, there was a massive risk of failure because people either laughed or they didn’t.
One night I died on stage completely, people just didn’t laugh at my jokes, even the established best ones fell flat.
As each joke failed my confidence went…
I left humiliated, walking into a nearby bar to drown my sorrows.
While drinking a pint, I looked around, no one noticed my humiliation, no one was gossiping about my failure…
…No one cared about what had just gone down, they were all too busy focused on their own lives.
I would go back and continue to work on my stand-up.
You don’t have to impress anyone
Fear of failure can come from social conditioning, if you have family or friends who belittle any of your efforts and rub in your failures, then you may start thinking what is the point in trying.
This was me.
The turning point in my life was when I stopped doing everything to try and impress others.
The result?
I started seeing more success in my life when I stopped worrying and just did it!
“Who do we set out to impress?
Ourselves?
Or others?”
Anthony T. Hincks
A life learning experience…
Although I would rather not fail, I realise it’s an important process to enable growth and change.
Therefore, if you really want to change your life – failure is something you should get familiar with.
If you fail, you will get over it – it’s almost like the human mind is conditioned to make the best of any situation they are in
This is why you see people in bad situations rationalise why they are better off.
Fear of failure makes you paralyzed to move. Sometimes failure happens, but you have to keep moving on and keep playing the ‘game’
Every failure I have made I don’t regret.
In many ways, I laugh and accept it was not meant to be.
There is something bitter sweet about failure, in some respects I’m not in the place I intended to be, I never landed my “dream career”, but I ended up in a place I wouldn’t change for the world because all the mess-ups in life.
Once upon a time…
I wanted to live in Canada, so I got a work visa.
But I failed because I got homesick and missed my family.
I dreamed escaping to another life would make me happy and give me everything I needed to be happy.
But instead I returned after five weeks. Which was just as well, as I came home and found that better life just 30 minutes down the road from where I originally lived.
…And so he lived happily every after…
Sometimes failure is good – so don’t fear it!
This is a remastered post from a few years ago….
As my last post talked about failing my driving test five times, it seemed a good time to share it again.
I hope you got a new perspective on the importance of failure.
James
Aim higher, feel good, get results…
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Perfect Manifesto 