Failure is NOT a dirty word!

There’s no need to fear failure, because failure is evidence of growth & is a stepping stone toward success.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new.” - Albert Einstein

Are you afraid of failing? Not just afraid of failing at big things, but small things too? Fear of failure shackles us to the version of ourselves that we are at this point in time. Fear of failure limits our growth & development personally & professionally. Fear of failure stops us from strengthening our resilience. Fear of failure keeps us stuck right where we are!

Fear of failure stops us from taking risks (calculated & uncalculated), stepping out of our comfort zone, gaining new skills, meeting new people, being exposed to new opportunities, experiencing new adventures, engaging in life fully. Fear of failure puts the brakes on us becoming a fuller, happier, more diverse version of ourselves!

So many of us look upon failure as something to be avoided. We think that if we fail people will think less of us or criticise us. We think that if we fail at one thing, we’ll never succeed at anything. We think that if we fail, we are failures! And that is a label we should never assign to ourselves … NEVER.

People who fail are not failures. Nothing could be further from the truth! Only people who fail, stay knocked down, don’t learn from their failures or never try again … can even possibly be considered as failures. 

When we fail, it means we’re attempting new things. If we were just continually doing the whole groundhog day scenario with our lives - eat, sleep, repeat - we wouldn’t ever be able to fail, because we’d never be attempting anything new. But would you consider that as being successful? Just doing exactly the same thing over & over & over again with nothing new thrown in to spice things up?

Just think about when you first started to walk, or speak, or swim, or ride a bike, or drive a car … did you succeed the first time? Of course not! And did anybody say you were a failure? Of course not! (And if they did, they’re what’s technically referred to as an a#$hole & their opinion is irrelevant!) Did you feel like you were a failure? Did you give up? Hell no, you did not! Your mind & body were learning new things, acquiring new skills & figuring out all the intricate details to allow you to master them. 

And all the little basic failures just allowed you to learn, develop, refine & master those new skills. The inevitable & predictable failures allowed you to succeed & become more proficient at walking, speaking, swimming, riding a bike & driving a car. Just like every other little failure in life has allowed you to become more proficient at other things.

Do you think basketball players stop playing if they don’t have a 100% dunk rate? Or marathon runners stop running if they don’t win every race or better their time on every run? Or cancer researchers stop experimenting if a potential treatment fails? Or authors stop writing if their novel doesn’t top the Amazon best sellers list? Hell no! Because these supposed ‘failures’ just spur them on to research, practise, pivot or whatever else is required to improve the outcome next time.

When we fail it allows us to broaden our knowledge because we need to troubleshoot, consciously & subconsciously, to find potential solutions. And when this occurs, we inevitably learn more than we would have if we’d succeeded the first time. It allows us to understand a process, person, task, skill or scenario at a much deeper level than just the surface knowledge that sometimes comes with instant success.

Every little failure is a stepping stone toward understanding ourselves & our environment (physical & emotional) to a much greater degree. Every little failure allows us to become more resilient in our approach to ourselves, our life & the people around us. 

Failure allows us to take a step back, perform an honest assessment & then move forward. And sometimes moving forward may not actually mean moving forward, but moving sideways into something else.

Occasionally we find ourselves travelling down paths that just seem littered with constant failures that we can’t always find a way around. And as we learn from these failures, sometimes the major lesson is that this path is not the right one for us. It’s inevitable that everything we try isn’t going to be a satisfactory match to our personality traits, ideals, interests, morals, innate & acquired skills, desired work/life balance or our preferred lifestyle. But we don’t know until we try. 

It’s only through trying something new that we gain an informed perspective about whether it’s a good match for us or not. If we just sit back & contemplate doing something & focusing on how it/we may fail, without ever giving it a shot, we lose the opportunity to gain beneficial knowledge about what we really want in life. 

Some people walk one path for most of their adult life & know that it’s the right one for them. And the successful ones continue to attempt new things whilst on that path, they continue to fail & learn, they continue to develop various offshoots from their main path. All the while failing, revising, learning, developing & pivoting as they acquire new knowledge from their failures.

Some people walk various paths through their lives before finding the one/s that are right for them. And every failure along the way just serves to develop their self-awareness & knowledge, while steering them toward other possibilities & adventures. Traversing a path, deciding that it’s not the right one for you & then exploring a different one cannot possibly be seen as a failure. All of the failures that lead us to believe that a path is wrong for us, simultaneously set us up to potentially succeed on a different path & find one that may be better suited to our goals, mission & ideals.

And some people walk one path for most of their adult life feeling miserable & unsatisfied, experiencing the stranglehold that fear of failure creates & never trying anything new or different. Subsequently, they feel a degree of protection, because they’re living in a space that is known to them both physically & emotionally. A space that feels safe. They may feel miserable & unsatisfied, but they’re shielding themselves from failure & that makes them feel better in the moment.

So, who’s really failing? 

Is it the person who tries new things, fails, picks themselves up, gains knowledge from the experience & continually tries again? They may endure a thousand failures, but they learn something from each & every one of them.

Or is it the person who’s so afraid of failing that they just never push themselves to try anything new or different? They may never fail, but they deprive themselves of valuable experiences & a multitude of opportunities to acquire knowledge.

So, what if you just looked upon failure as a learning opportunity? What if you just saw failure as a stepping stone toward your inevitable success? What if you just felt that failure was a rewarding part of life, allowing you to discover your most fulfilling path? What if you just heard ‘growth’ every time someone said the word failure? 

What if failure was no longer a dirty word, but one that you strove to achieve? What if?

Kim Harrison
mindmakeover.com.au