Overcoming Your Fear of Failure

I can say I never really had a fear of failure because I simply saw FEAR as (False Evidence Appearing Real) and failure as the opportunity to fail forward. Many of us go through our daily lives in routines that have been with us since we began our days of schooling. Our routines as times consist of doing the same things day after day without ever trying anything new. Moreover, many times we confuse the adversity we may face in our lives with failure, and they are not one in the same. If you come to work early one morning to learn that your job has been downsized or outsourced overseas, you have not failed, although you will more than likely experience adversity. If you and a few friends start a baking business in your community to sell cookies and cakes and after two months you give up, you probably would classify that as a failure.

I tell people all the time that we learn more about ourselves and what we are capable of during times of adversity or when we may have failed to reach our goals. Schooling taught us and continues to teach our children not to make an “F” because that signifies failure, and that is not good. However, many of the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs will tell you that they have failed a many times before they reached their desired goals. I believe the conditioning we experience in schooling remains with us throughout our adult lives and lead to stagnate and mediocre lives where we are afraid to pursue our dreams and reach our goals.

Many of us have heard stories of students that have made all “A’s” throughout their lives and happen to make their first “C” and spirals into depression. This is partly due to the fact that the student has never experienced this and is not equipped to handle this PERCEIVED failure. I have a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and currently completing a doctoral degree and I can honestly say that I learned the most in my life by the mistakes, setbacks, failures, and successes I have experience as an entrepreneur and trying new things.

You show me a person that has not experienced failure in a long time and I will show you a person that has not achieved anything of valuable success in a long time. We all have failed as toddlers learning how to walk, and as children learning how to ride our bicycles, although we kept trying and persevered and learn from our mistakes. Overcome your Fear of Failing; try something new, you might just FAIL FORWARD.