3 Reasons Why FAILURE Should Be On Your To Do List
Okay kids, I’m going to switch the channel here and dive into something that isn’t necessarily the nicest of items on our TO DO list:
FAILURE
There, there. Take a deep breath. I know that’s a scary word!
How do you decide what constitutes failure?
When I hit the big 3-0, I realized that I’m deeply afraid of failing. I know I have always been this way and had this fear, but a window of awareness opened up for me and I realized that I’ve been allowing this to push me around for so long.
But, there was something else poking its head in that window.
There was also a deep rooted fear of failing to try at all. Of not even giving it a shot and making any attempt.
For a long time, I always tell myself:
If I don’t try, I fail myself. Even if I fail at my chosen attempt, I still succeed because I tried.
We all know that “failure isn’t fun”. Plainly put, it sucks. But in fact, you may be more controlled by that fear than you want to believe.
JK Rowling, in her 2008 Harvard commencement speech says,
“You might be driven by a fear of failure as much as you are driven by a fear of success.”
Have you ever imagined yourself yelling your fears out loud from a mountain top? Then, afterward, you step back and pinch yourself, realizing you are still alive and breathing. The world has not collapsed below your feet.
When we step back and identify the current fear pits in our lives, areas in which we’re just not so sure will allow us to succeed, we must remember that we can emerge so much wiser and stronger from set backs.
Hitting rock bottom isn’t the end. You can go up. It WILL NOT be easy, but you can do it if you really want to. I mean, really want to. So, what will YOU choose today?
Three Reasons Why Failure Should Be On Your To Do List
1. You Gain Perspective: You begin to see things differently. You know what it is like to wear those shoes. You have stripped down the situation to the bare bones and are seeing it for exactly what it really is–in all of it’s ugly, truthful glory. Perspective may not pay the bills or solve the problem for the long run, but it sure as heck does help you see clearly in order to get to a better position.
2. You Gain Motivation: Perhaps it won’t come right away. It may happen a few days later or a few years later. Either way, you’ll find the motivation to accept your situation for what it is, no matter how horrible, and use that as fuel to pull yourself to the place you desire to be.
3. You Gain Strength: You’ll emerge a stronger and wiser person than before you stepped into the failure boat. You may not see this until long AFTER the situation, but it will be there. When you lift weights, you tear your muscles. It hurts. They rebuild. Trust in yourself that strength will be there waiting for you once the failure fog clears.
Click here to check out some famous failures
Watch JK Rowling’s 2008 Harvard Commencement speech and see what you think about her perspective on failure:
“It is impossible to live without falling at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you failed by default.”
[custom_author=jenny]