![]() The question is no longer whether you will fail or not, the question is what you will do once you fail. And the moment you do that, be willing to accept that you will fail. To achieve things that matter to you, you need to put one foot outside your boundary of comfort. You can’t sit inside your comfort zone and expect great things to happen. To be successful, be comfortable being uncomfortable. What did you fear more – failing or taking risks?.Did you play safe, unwilling to take risks or explore opportunities that required you to step outside your comfort zone?. ![]() How many times did you fail? Do you really think you pushed hard enough if you succeeded all the time?.However, there’s a huge gap between what we desire and how we act.īeing risk averse, most of us spend our time and energy in trying to prevent a failure rather than creating a plan of action to deal with it when it does show up.Ĭonsider some of your last work assignments or projects and do a reality check: When asked, most people would prioritize learning to deal with a failure over getting rid of it. What’s more worthwhile – getting rid of failure or learning to deal with it? It starts with asking the right questions: 1. Now that you know learning to handle failures is an important skill in life and nobody is going to teach you how to do it well, you ought to learn it by yourself. It’s to be the kind of person who’s more fearful of missing an opportunity and inaction, than the person who fears taking risks. It’s to not perceive failure as an obstacle, but rather an opportunity to proceed. It’s to not let failure turn into a defeat, but a lesson to succeed. The only difference that can set you apart from numerous others is your perception and response to failure. The negative consequences from the past may lead to inaction when presented with another situation, preventing you from having the experience, competence and the skills required to take action, which further instills a fear of failure leading to a cycle of fear and failure which is hard to break. The experience of failing despite working hard stays with you. Megan McArdle says in The Up Side of Down “Learning to fail well means learning to understand your mistakes, because unless you know what went wrong, you may do the wrong things to correct it.” And when you do the wrong things, you may work hard without making progress. In other words, if you don’t learn to handle failures well, you may never succeed. Benjamin Franklin once said “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” This applies to both failures and achieving goals. You cannot succeed without failing first. With our entire reward system designed around achievement, performance and excellence, where’s room for failure? In school, college and all throughout our work life, we are expected to do well. As a society, we celebrate success and look down upon failures. The dreaded F grade is linked to “failure.” Anyone who has ever received an “F” on their report card will remember feelings of disappointment, shame and self-doubt. Yet, we aren’t really hardwired to handle failures well. Failure and our ability to deal with it is such a crucial skill in life. On the other hand, learning to handle it well can increase our chance of future success. In other words, it’s not our failure, but our reaction to it that determines where we end up. The person who makes it to the top isn’t the one who faces many hardships and obstacles along the way, it’s the one who persists and resists – persists in their efforts and resists the easy path to give up. Anyone attempting to climb a mountain will face a fair share of surprises along the way, some good but mostly bad. It’s hard to disagree that success doesn’t come easy. Many articles, books, podcasts, and videos these days convey the importance of failure in shaping up our future.
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