Fear of Failure

“Failure is not the opposite of success—it’s a part of it.”

William Ritter

There is no need to fear failure.

It serves a purpose for you and actually can help you reach your success.

You might have heard how tough times build character and make success even sweeter. If that is true, then you have to redefine what failure means to you.

Failure, defined the traditional way, can lead you to give up, get stuck or not try all together.

What if instead, you define failure as a chance to learn, grow and move forward with more information with which to make better decisions.

Before Edison discovered how to create the light bulb, he failed 10,000 times.

He did not know there 10,000 ways not to make a working lightbulb. By going through all of those failed iterations, he learned step by step what didn't work - so he could learn what did work.

Day to day life is based on relativity. That is, you can't experience something without understanding what the lack of it feels like.

Think about it... if you do not experience failure, how can you know what it is to be successful?

Just as you can not understand what it is to be tall if there is nothing short to compare you to.

Sports provide another great example of the power of failure. When sports teams lose a game, they do not throw in the towel, call it quits and never play again.

Instead, they review tape and look at what they did well and what they did not. Then they go out to the next game, taking with them the lessons learned from defeat, determined not to repeat them.

Today, think back to a time in your life when you stopped working toward a goal because you perceived that you had failed. What lessons did you learn that you can apply to your work now?

Your Daily Success Checklist provides you a place to record lessons learned in the reflection section. Use it every day!