Fear of failure.
It’s one of the major causes of inaction, procrastination, the obsession with perfection, and a host of other issues.
People are afraid to fail.
If they fail, they think their self esteem might drop, they might feel humiliated, embarrassed, lose self confidence – the reasons for the fear are many.
But fear it no more because you’re going to learn how to rid of it by giving yourself permission to fail.
So how do you go about exactly doing that?
Realize this.
YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL.
It’s inevitable, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY:
IT’S NATURAL.
I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.
IT IS NATURAL FOR YOU TO FAIL.
I really hate to break it to you but you are NOT PERFECT.
Neither am I.
And since YOU, the SOURCE of all your actions is imperfect – it ONLY MAKES SENSE that your actions will in turn, BE IMPERFECT AS WELL.
It makes NO sense for you to expect your actions to be perfect, if the source from which they stem from, which is you in your entirety, is imperfect.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Our actions HAVE TO BE IMPERFECT BECAUSE WE ARE IMPERFECT.
Really think about.
Really let that sink in.
Then feel all that weight get lifted off your shoulders.
Feel that chill run down your spine.
You’ve just taken one of the biggest steps you can in giving yourself permission to fail.
The second point I want to make is this.
It’s UNNATURAL to assume you’ll hit what you’re aiming for 100% the first time.
It’s unnatural to assume you can go DIRECTLY from point A to point B in a PURE, SINGLE, STRAIGHT LINE fashion with no mistakes represented as jagged edges or zig zags.
It’s unnatural.
Nothing is straight.
Nothing.
Things just appear straight – from afar.
You can find the straightest razor blade on the planet, but look at it under a microscope – it’s not straight.
Nothing in nature is straight.
Nothing in the universe is straight.
And neither will your efforts be.
You journey from point A to point B will not be straight.
It will be jagged.
It will zig zag.
It will go up and down.
And all that’s what helps you get to where you want to be.
You give yourself permission to fail, take some sort of action and fail.
You didn’t get to Point B from that one action.
And you’re not crushed at all because you expect it.
You don’t give up, curse yourself, beat yourself up over the failure.
It’s natural.
You are imperfect, therefore your actions are imperfect.
But you did something and you look at what happened as a result. You get the feedback and then you do something else based on that feedback.
You fail again.
But that’s ok.
It’s natural.
To be expected.
It’s as natural as you breathing.
You did something, failed, and you look at what happened as a result. You get that feedback and then you do the next step accordingly with respect to not just that feedback, but the feedback from the first failure too.
Rinse and repeat.
You will fail again and again and again as you should, and with each of those failures, you slowly gain information from the feedback that you BUILD UPON EXPONENTIALLY so you get closer and closer to Point B faster and faster.
The edges aren’t as jagged or zig zaggy anymore.
It’s beginning to smooth out.
But the journey will never be straight.
No journey ever is.
No plane, ship, car, bike, or tricycle ever travels in a straight line.
Ever.
The driver is ALWAYS constantly adjusting course.
And that’s how they all inevitably get from Point A to Point B.
Give yourself permission to fail by realizing that it’s natural for you to fail.
It’s as natural as you breathing.
You are imperfect, therefore your actions will be imperfect.
Realize also that it’s NOT natural for you to go from point A to point B in one swift straight line.
It’s natural for the journey to be all over the place at first, but with time, it will get smoother, as long as you course correct based on the feedback you get.
Things in the beginning will not look straight at all simply because you’re too close to it in the beginning. You notice everything, every little detail and mishap.
But as time goes on and your experience grows, you stop viewing life under a microscope.
You start to “zoom out” and look at the big picture.
And what you’ll find is that yeah – over time, your journey did look like a straight line, but definitely not a perfect one.
Just like everything else under and around the sun.
