FAILURE IS AN OPTION

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” ~Paulo Coelho

I hope this is the year where you embrace life, face your fears and live with gusto and pizazz. I wish for you the knee scraping, dizzy making kind of year that comes from staring down your fears and doing it anyways. It - the dream and goals that you have excused, hidden and buried. It – the new business, relationship, travelling, going back to school, writing the book, creating boundaries, taking an art class. It –the standing up, stepping up and starting over. If you look back over 2012 how many regrets or unfulfilled dreams can be traced to the fear of failure? Fear of looking stupid? I hope you will embrace failure, because it is through failure that you learn, grow, expand and exceed. At the root of most regrets is the fear of failure.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…

Try, try again. Remember when you were a kid and you did it anyways and again and again and again? Learned to walk, ride your bike, swim, asked the girl out? Remember exploring, figuring out your limits, seeing your brilliance, amazing yourself and chasing your desires? Remember the feeling of getting it and the desire to keep trying until you did? When did you start to stop? Do you remember the moment when you believed the limiting messages about what you could accomplish and achieve? Do you remember when you started to believe that you might as well stop?

FAILURE = FEEDBACK

There have been many times in my life where fear of failure has paralyzed me. I was afraid of what I believed it meant about me – that I was not smart enough, deserving enough and good enough. It is when we personalize the experience, attaching who we are, with what we did or did not do, that failure becomes a label rather than an experience. There is venom in thinking that you are less than because of a misstep. The secret is to remember what failure actually is. Really look at it, because the cost of believing that failure is bad and something to be feared is high. The concern about not doing it right and perfectly, the first time, immediately and every time stops you before you start and keeps you playing small and living on the fringes of your life.

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED

The most brilliant, talented and gifted among us are that way because they have remembered something many have forgotten – failure is a greatness maker. It is a guide, a valuable source of information and indispensable feedback and most importantly failure is an inevitable, natural and needed step on the way to achieving your goals. It is a risk worth taking in the pursuit of a goal and ultimately in understanding yourself. So, you fall down, come up short, miss the mark, drop the ball, disappoint and lose it all, so what? Edison failed 10,000 times before the light bulb worked and Walt Disney went bankrupt twice before he achieved his dream. Had it not been for falling down or making a mistake we would not be walking or talking and the comforts, technologies and experiences we take for granted today would not exist.

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You could play it safe. You could walk away. You could blame and shame yourself. Or, you could use desire as fuel, tapping into the undaunted spirit of your inner child. You could see risk as necessary and the possibilities within the risk luring; the possibility that failure will reveal the secret to your success. Make 2013 the year you stop running in the opposite direction of your dreams, afraid of the very thing which may lead you straight to them – failure. Failure - beautiful, revealing, strength building, innovation creating. Learning to see failure as inevitable means that you will embrace it and learn from it. You will stop seeing it as the opposite of success but will see it as an ally on your journey towards your dreams.

What would you do this year if you did not let the fear of failure stop you? If you would like support as you reclaim your dreams, please contact me at, onpurposelifecoaching@hotmail.com