They all say you shouldn’t be afraid to fail, since failure is an integral part of success; if you want to succeed, you simply have to go from failure to failure without giving up. Next to that, we can also find a very popular view on failure saying that you can usually learn much more from your failures than you can from your successes. Both statements are true in a way.
But what you’ll hear much more rarely is that failing really sucks. It sucks big time. It hurts, it hinders your self-confidence and you feel really shitty about yourself for a long time afterwards. At least most people do. That’s also why most people give up after they fail big a few times. It’s totally understandable that you become more cautious and cold if your heart gets broken a few times.
On a logical level, all the cool quotes and sayings make sense. You fail and you try again and again all the way until you succeed. Nevertheless, persisting from failure to failure is more of an emotional than an intellectual challenge. You can either use negative emotions that come from failure to additionally motivate yourself or you can let them drag you down. You either get motivated to learn more and master the fire or you simply don’t want to get burned ever again, meaning you go back to the average life
Ego
When it comes to failing, our egos are our own worst enemies. As soon as things start going wrong, our defense mechanisms kick in, tempting us to do what we can to save face. Yet, these very normal reactions, you should never let your ego stop you from trying harder.
Fear
Fear must be cold, because it freezes people. Deer are famous for freezing right before a car hits them. Like that situation, freezing in place isn’t a smart strategy in life.
One of the biggest fears people have in their lives is failure. Life is too short to let fear make big decisions for you. It is not easy to overcome the fear of failure, but once you build up the confidence to not let fear hold you back you’ll acheive much more.
If it takes 5,000 hours to master something and fear makes us do nothing, then fear needs to go. Face your fears head on and you’ll find success right behind them. Overcoming fear is success in itself, and it opens the door for more.
Lesson: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
Bonus tip: Fear itself is afraid of the spotlight. Get into the habit of confronting it, and soon enough, it will be afraid of YOU.
They don’t plan
Improvised living will give you unexpected results. You will always have a better chance to succeed in any venture if you have a plan. By forming a simple plan, former non-planners will increase their rate of success.
When you make your plan, be sure it’s specific. Don’t say,i think am going to make $2 Say, “I’m going to write a post tomorrow to be able to make $2” Having a complete vision of your intentions prepares you to execute them and you’ll be more likely to flatten obstacles in your way. I’m not just saying that. It’s been proven to be more effective .
Specific intentions work better because vague intentions are open to interpretation.
They try to climb a mountain before they even leave the house
When I first start write post on steemit, my goal was to get at least $2 per post.Getting upvote in a post is easy, but it doesn’t do much on its own. The value comes from Starting.
I was never intimidated by the challenge, even when I was sick or tired. This one tiny step helped me bridge the gap between brokenness and being financial okay.
When you aim high, intimidation is common, and that puts your goal at risk. If my goal was 50 push-ups a day, I would have failed at times and gotten discouraged. Sometimes I do 50 push-ups a day with my “too easy” challenge, and I don’t ever feel discouraged.
This is more relevant for daily tasks and goals than long term dreams. Don’t dream to be a mediocre person. Dream big, but break that dream down into small, daily actions that inch you closer to it every day.
They’re pessimists
If you go in expecting to fail, you’ve got a great chance to do it. If I expected Deep Existence to wear me out, be unpopular, and waste my time, why would I write this? Pessimism leads to failure because it decreases the amount of effort a person will put forth. Success requires effort, which is fueled by the perspective that your efforts are not in vain.
Excuses
Blaming others, while a lousy thing to do, isn’t even the problem – it’s the poisoned perspective it reveals! Do you know what it really means?
Excuses and throwing blame are the same way of saying, “I’m not in control.” Now that’s scary.
Everyone had a perfect excuse when the economy went into a recession in these past few years, but after telling everyone their perfect excuse, they were still in the same mess. Meanwhile, other people did well because they adapted.
Excuses feel good temporarily, but don’t be fooled, they can only hurt you. Accept full responsibility for where you are, and you’ll have a chance to change it for the better.
They don’t care
Obviously, if you don’t care about doing it well, you won’t. Apathy can infect any area of our lives, and when it strikes, it produces bucketfuls of failure. The scariest part of apathy is how contagious it is. You’ll have it in one area of life, feel the resulting failure, and let it spread to another area. Or your apathetic friends will rub off on you.
This is one more reason to experiment and try different things – to ward off apathy. The more excited about your life and the possibilities to explore, the better! Apathy can often lead to the worst-case scenario of human life. That worst-case scenario is next on the list as the number one reason for failure, and it’s the saddest thing you’ll ever see in a human being.
Lesson: The more you care, the more you’ll succeed.
They give up
It crushes me to see it – a human being full of potential…giving up. Suicide is the ultimate expression of giving up, and in my opinion it is life’s most tragic event. We all have a place in this world, and suicide is giving up before you find it.
Giving up isn’t always so obvious.It can be a newbie that have been writing post and have not make up to $1.It can be the guy in the cubicle making 90k a year, who has been slowly drained of his vigor for life, accepting misery because it’s bundled with a nice paycheck. It can be a Steemians that have been participating in a contest and have never win before.
You can have the worst strategy and focus on all of the wrong things, but as long as you keep trying, you will learn and have hope. That is an important truth.
Failure happens; none of us escape unblemished. But for every single person who has ever lived, the secret of life is an unflinching, inspiring little phrase that has shaped nations, bought freedom, saved lives, and fulfilled so many dreams…
Failure is inevitable. You’ll fail many times in life. The more successful you want to be, the more you’ll probably fail, at least in the beginning. Because good decisions come from experience and experience comes from making bad decisions. If you want to be successful faster, you probably have to double your rate of failing. That’s how you learn faster as well.
If you persist from failure to failure long enough, you shall find your success sooner or later. But you have to fail fast. You must not build false hopes on your ego and naivety. You have to be brutally honest with yourself, honest about whether something works or not and where you’re going.
You need a strategy, you need metrics and you need to learn fast. Last but not least, you must know that failing sucks, and you have to take time to emotionally process every failure, otherwise you can only slowly become a very bitter and unhappy person. That’s something no money or success can undo. It’s true that good times make soft people and tough times build character, and so you can build your character going through failure, but being under stress for a longer period of time is also how you burn yourself out and fail too deep to stand up again. Therefore you need a superior life strategy and a system for dealing with failure – a system for validated learning and healing your wounds.