While this sounds cruel, we deep down fear this. The majority are stuck living a life of mediocrity because of the fear of failing. People avoid failure because they believe it would result in defeat. They are so overcome with fear of failure that they cannot proceed.
And although most people associate failure with rejection, adversity is necessary if we want to succeed. We are taught from an early age to be terrified of failing, so we enter the world on tiptoeing and never take risks.
Speaking from personal experience, I can say there are times when I rely too much on something I can “naturally be good at”. The same can be said about overreliance on talent.
Success persuades us to believe that our abilities are sufficient. We ignore outside variables or chance occurrences that might have had an impact. Simply because we made the right decision once does not guarantee that we will have the same good fortune again. It’s tempting to claim genius status and take credit for the accomplishment if you’ve led a team that has achieved impressive figures. But what if your brilliance is a lucky break or the product of a rival’s misfortune?
Your ability to succeed is dependent on how you respond to failure. A smart individual will design a strategy for success, but it is unwise to stick with it forever. No matter how skilled or intelligent you are, you will need to constantly change your strategy so you can monitor your progress and make adjustments as needed. Understanding the reasons for your successes and failures is equally important.
What you can do to improve: Celebrate your victory! After that, investigate how and why it occurred. Examine all of the pressure points along the journey, those instances where a choice or action had a big impact on the result.
One more thing I will note is that the fear of failure harms us.
Most in life fail to realize that winning and losing are not the only outcomes in life.
Entrepreneurs and prosperous startups fail, bounce back, rebuild, take a chance, and fail once more. At some point, the focus shifts from success or failure to what they learned from the experience, which is more significant. There is no single recipe for success, but failure is never fun. Choosing whether or not to learn from our experiences is always a trial-and-error process. It is only if you don’t learn from your mistakes that make you a fool.
You must accept the possibility of failure if you want to be the most successful. Just remember that we develop ourselves when we fail. Get back up and try differently.
Failure is that annoying, strict teacher that reminds you to re-do your homework assignment. So, don’t just sit there! You have lots of work to do, my friend.