Fear of failure is one of the most common reasons people give when asked why they haven't pursued their dreams. If you carefully analyze the definitions of failure, you'll probably realize they have one thing in common when it comes to goal achievement: Failure is a perception and you get to choose how you will perceive your efforts and results. If you believe you have failed, then yes, you have. If you believe you don't have what it takes to succeed, then yes, you don't. But remember, any person who goes through life without experiencing failure is the ultimate failure in life.
Success is not defined by or built upon the absence of failure. Rather, success is felt only when failure is accepted as part of the process and is overcome. Most highly successful entrepreneurs fail multiple times in the process to be success. A child learning to walk falls down many times before taking those successful first steps, then stumbles and falls again and again before being able to walk, and then run. Without the willingness to experience yet another failure, no child would ever walk. Without the willingness to experience failure, no great deed would ever get done.
Successful people, whether they are millionaire business people, or perhaps those who seem to be ‘lucky in love’, to people who overcome adversity, injury, accident or disability, all have one thing in common. They don’t quit when the going gets tough. They accept, learn and move on from failure. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric bulb, is often quoted regarding failure: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work"; "Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up". If Edison has been believed that failure meant he was inadequate, he would never have invented the light bulb.
In order to achieve success in any area of your life, you need to redefine failure. You need to see failure as a stepping-stone to success. If the fear of failure is stopping you from doing what you really want to do, I want to encourage you to change your concept of failure. I want to encourage you to let go of your old way of seeing failure and start to envision failures as learning opportunities on the way to success.
I think it's time to change the grass roots meaning of failure. Failure only means that something didn't work out how you thought it would or hoped it would or planned for it to, period. So now try something different and then try again until you get the results you want. The real fun and excitement is the creation part of working toward success as you define it.
Failure is usually viewed in a negative connotation, causing one to feel worthless. If instead of self-pity after failure, you view it from another perspective; you can often turn failure into success. Failures are our training ground. We must permit them to be our schoolmasters, showing us the right way by eliminating the wrong ways. So why not learn from our failure and use them as stepping stones to our success?
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