Do You Fear Failure?
Failing is the only common theme between people that achieve great things.
Failure is a PART OF success!
It sounds crazy, but when you look at all the successful individuals in the world like Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, they’ll tell you how many times they were passed up, missed the shot, blew the sales pitch, got fired or were rejected.
Failing is one of our biggest fears we have, but it is actually beneficial in order to get better and grow, which can lead to success.
If failure helps us grow and leads to our success, why are we SO afraid of it?
Let's re-shape the way we think of failure, and learn to embrace it instead of being fearful. How do we do this?
First let's ask a few questions:
What is your own personal relationship to failure?
How do you frame it?
How does it make you feel?
Start to dig around, get uncomfortable, and uncover what failure means to you.
You can’t always change what happens to you, but you can change the way you respond.
What’s your initial reaction when you are faced with rejection or failure? Do you feel dejected and want to throw in the towel? Or do you accept it, take note of the lessons, and try again? Your response to failure will have a lot to do with the level of success you achieve.
So what can you do to try and help improve your relationship to failure? How can you pick yourself up and dust yourself off... boost your resilience?
I'm sharing a few tips to help you overcome and embrace failure.
4 WAYS TO
OVER COME FAILURE
1. Remember Your Strengths
Most people have a natural tendency to think the worse. I think it's a coping mechanism for disappointment. If we expect the worse and it happens then we're ready, if it doesn't happen then we're happy. With this method, we hang on to and remember negative things in our lives far more than positive things. When times of failure come, we bring up negative qualities and negative self-talk. Make and post a list of your your strengths, your skills, and your achievements. It’s imperative that you learn to boost your confidence and self-esteem.
2. Learn The Lesson
There is ALWAYS a lesson to be learned, but failure is so uncomfortable, most people don’t stay in this space long enough to actually work out what the lesson is. Be curious, investigate the situation. Write down all the lessons that are available for you to learn with each experience.
3. Move Forward
Failure has the ability to stop us dead in our tracks if we let it. So the key to moving through this phase is just that... keep moving! Once you've examined the lesson that you need to learn, take note and move forward. Think of a small step can you take forward from here.
You need to experience rejection, disappointment and failure on your journey so that you learn to make better decisions that support your goals and your purposes. It’s PART of your journey, not an annoying delay or distraction, so don't be afraid of them. The faster you can embrace that, the easier it will be to move forward. One of the reason people get stuck is because of resistance to acceptance.
4. Help Someone
When we experience failure, do some volunteer work or help a friend that might be experienceing the same thing. It’ll help you to stop dwelling on negativity and will foster hope. Also, reiterating the lessons you learned through it will help to solidify it in your own life.
What big dreams do you have that have been put up on the back burner because of your fear of failure?