So many people claim that the reason they aren’t doing what they want to be doing is because they are afraid to fail. I always follow up that statement with this question: what does failure mean to you? Failure is a GOOD thing most of the time. It teaches us that something we are doing is not working! If something is not working, what is the next logical step? Try something else! There really is no “failure” – just things that do not work the way we hoped they had. Most successful people fail several times before hitting on something that works for them. Never trust someone who says that they have never failed – it means that they aren’t setting their standards high enough!
If we look at failure from a different angle, we can see that it really does not exist. We never fail, we merely succeed at finding out that something is not working the way we had hoped it would, and therefore are given another opportunity to do something that just might!
That is a great way to look at it, and so true! Failure just means you haven’t figured out the way you need to do something.
I like the Mariana Williams quote that says it is not failure that keeps us from accomplishing great things, but success. I think people are fearful of the changes that success will require.
I agree with Irene; most people are not really afraid to fail; they’re afraid to succeed, because it means letting go of a lot of old thought patterns, behaviors and really accepting what success brings. It puts people out of their comfort zones. A lot of people don’t succeed, because they have more of a belief in failure than a belief in success. If you cannot picture a positive outcome, then surely you won’t produce one. This negative thinking has a lot of sources and sadly, for a lot of folks, it stems from being told that they’re not good enough or they don’t deserve happiness. It’s a hard thing to overcome, but once you do, it opens the floodgates! Peace!