Freedom to Fail
How to embrace failure as your friend
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure”
Paul Coelho
How many times have you quit doing something because you weren’t sure you’d succeed? It’s happened to me more often than I’d like to admit. There have been many days in my life when I haven’t wanted to get out of bed because I was so afraid of failure.
Fear of failure can suck the life out of us and it always prevents us from living an extraordinary life - 100% of the time.
We all know what it feels like to fail. It’s not fun and we don’t like experiencing it.
But here’s what you need to know, understand and believe: If you don’t allow yourself to fail, you will never reach your full potential or start living your dreams.
As always, it starts with your thinking. Your mindset is key to any change you want to make.
So how do we start thinking differently about failure? It always helps to look at it from a different perspective. I love this quote by J. K. Rowling: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.” That certainly invites me to think about failure in a new way. It reminds me that if I opt not to try at all because I’m afraid of failing, then I’m failing anyway.
Another way to shift perspective is to think about failures as learning opportunities instead. Or, think of failure as a great teacher.
Here are 3 ways to start thinking of failure as a learning opportunity:
It will help you grow in all aspects of your life. Failing a driving test the first time will likely make you a better, more careful driver in the long run. Not getting the job you want may make you feel like a failure, but may actually be the best thing that ever happened to you. It may help you re-evaluate your decisions and look for an even better career, or it may be the push you needed to improve your skills and be the first choice next time. If you don’t experience failure then your successes won’t feel as important.
Failing gives you insight. It provides the opportunity to look closer at what you’re doing. What’s working and not working? Where do you want to improve? You can bet that every great invention we know in our lives went through many failures and changes before the final product landed in our hands. If the inventor had worried about failing or the dreaded “what will people think?” question (a whole other topic….), we wouldn’t have the products, experiences, or ideas that we have in front of us today.
Failure expands our creativity. When something doesn’t work we have to figure out new ways to try and make it work. Our creative minds have to get in gear. Creativity is good for the brain and it helps us “think outside the box”.
Fear of failure can lead us in a downward shame spiral where our reptilian brain starts to send us all sorts of fear signals. We can go from “If I make a mistake, I’ll lose my job” to thinking the world is going to end in a matter of seconds.
That’s why it’s really important to stop, take a breath, notice your thoughts, and quiet the fear shame spiral before it gets out of control. If you don’t do that, then fear of failure will control your life.
Failure can be our friend. Think about children when they’re learning to walk. They try to get up, they fall down, they get up, they fall down, and then they eventually get up and walk across the room. If they didn’t allow themselves to fail a few times, they would never walk.
We grow by allowing ourselves to fail, over and over again. Let’s start thinking about failure as a learning opportunity, a stepping stone to your dreams, and allow it to become your friend in the journey.
I’ll leave you with this quote:
Failing
“This word is not a negative thing. Sometimes we think that failing means the worst.
But what if it means we’ve tried?
And what if in trying we aren’t failing, but are learning, growing and changing our lives?
That’s living.”
Rachel Marie Martin
Do you need help exploring your thoughts to move past overwhelm and start living the life you truly want? If so, life & mindset coaching will help you get there. Contact me, sharon@sharonashtonmindfulyoga.com, for a consultation and get started on achieving your goals and create the life of your dreams.
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