Failure

Today the topic will be a hard one. I will address and talk about something that we all hate and fear. I will talk about the big F!

Oi! I don’t know what word you were thinking about just there, but I am talking about failure.

Let’s face it, in one way or another, with more or less intensity we all have a fear of failing.

We fear failing in our jobs and careers, we fear failing in our relationships, we fear failing as parents or sons and daughters.

Ultimately, some of us are afraid to fail as a person. As an individual.

But what is failure, really?

Failure is basically defined and an absence or lack of success. It is understood that we fail when we fail to achieve success in certain areas, actions or objectives that we set.

Many people don't take action, don’t go for objectives, don’t do certain things, because of their fear of failure and that my friends, is the biggest failure of them all.

What do you think? Do you think a successful person never fails?

The most successful people that I know have failed so many times. In fact, they will tell you that their failures are what allowed them to be successful.

I have failed so much in my life. I have failed in certain jobs. I had failed relationships. Failed business endeavours.

At one point of my life, I thought my life was just a succession of failures and for that reason I defined myself as a failure.

For sometime I allowed the failure mindset and the fear of failing to have control over me.

Because of that, I didn't do things. I didn’t go to job interviews, I didn’t go on dates, I didn’t go to the gym or started a new hobby.

I was stuck in what I thought was my cozy, safe zone.

But while I was there, I was missing out on a whole new world of opportunities. I was not growing, I was not changing, I was not evolving.

Try to remember when you were a child. You will not remember your first steps, but I can guarantee you that you fell a few times before you started walking. Did you give up back then? Did you say “Nah, fuck this. I am bad at walking, I am failing at it. I’ll just crawl for the rest of my life.”

Or when you were learning how to ride a bike. Did you quit back then because you fell?

I sometimes look at my nephews and we tell them, “Don’t go there. Don’t run”. What do they do? They go there. They run. They jump and they… fall. They come to us crying with bruised knees and wounded arms.

Once the pain goes away and the tears dry out what do they do? They go there again. And they run and they jump and they fall… and they keep doing it until they don’t fall anymore.

They are not afraid of failing. They don’t even think about failing. They think about getting somewhere as fast as they can because of their curiosity to see what’s there and more importantly, to see if they can make it. And that’s what drives them.

When did we lose that? When was it that we started to be more afraid of failing than eager to see what’s there, to see if we can make it?

That happened when we started growing and having bad experiences and the concept of fear started to get to us.

There is nothing wrong with fear, don’t get me wrong. Fear is what helps us pause before we do something which may be potentially dangerous to us.

However, fear needs to be more rationalized. We need to understand when it is rational to be afraid of, say, a snake because it poses an imminent threat or when we don’t even watch I’m a celebrity get me out of here because we are afraid of snakes.

Fear should be what makes us look both ways before crossing the street but doesn’t stop us from crossing because we don’t know what’s on the other side.

And fear should never stop you from crossing the street because you are afraid to fail to reach the other side.

Fear and excitement cause the exact same physical reactions in your body: increased heart rate, sweaty palms...you just need to control the conversation that your brain is trying to have with you.

Imagine when you are about to go on a roller coaster ride. Your brain is going crazy on you, telling you thousands of reasons why you shouldn’t go because it is so dangerous. But you try to reason with it and say that it is perfectly safe, it is just a fun ride.

I remember a few years ago when I was in Puerto Aventura in Spain. It had, at the time, the biggest, tallest roller coaster in Europe. I really wanted to go on it, but I spent the day delaying it because I was scared.

The entire day, I could hear the roar of the roller coaster and the people screaming on it. And my brain kept telling me “Nah mate. No way you will go on that thing.”

But I spent the day convincing my brain that I was going to. Because I had a huge crush on Britney Spears who was dating Justin Timberlake at the time and I read somewhere that just a few weeks before me, Justin Timberlake went on that same roller coaster. So I said, If he did it, I will do it too.

When the ride ended, I was shaking, my parents told me that I was pale as milk, but I just wanted to go and do it again. It wasn’t scary anymore. It was exciting. One of the best experiences of my life. The real failure would have been not going on it.

And that’s the thing that we need to learn and change our mindset on: Regret is always worse than failure or fear.

At the end of the day failure is just another choice. You only ever really fail if you give up.

You know, sometimes I wake up and I think “Bloody hell. I am failing miserably. My book is not selling. My podcast is not having as many listeners as I hoped for… I might as well give up, because I am failing.

But then, I apply the breakthrough thinking and mindfulness principles that I have learned and I change the conversation in my head.

What if today is the day when it all happens? What if I give up today and if I hadn’t given up I would have been incredibly successful. And so I push harder, for another day.

And that is truly the difference between successful and unsuccessful people: Unsuccessful people give up when they fail. They Change the goal and decide it is easier to go for something else or not to go for anything at all, whilst successful people understand that failure puts us closer to success than we were when we first started.

We understand the value of failing, because we understand that what doesn’t work, is equally as important as what doesn’t work.

Imagine the Covid-19 vaccine trials. How would the scientists learn what works and create a successful vaccine without seeing what doesn’t work. Without failed attempts.

So my message to you today is this: Before you call yourself a failure understand that you only truly fail when you give up.

Embrace failure and a part of the journey to success. Learn with the failures and do things in a different way but don’t give up.

If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself up and try again. Remember when you were a child. You fell and you went right back up going for it again.

Go back to your childhood and get that curious spirit back. Get nervous and excited about trying new things and understand that it is ok to be afraid because that is a natural biological response, but also understand that you are not a child anymore and you are wise enough to know the difference between true fear of something risky for your life, or fear of the uncertainty. Fear of failing.

Don’t give in to the latter. Nothing grows inside your cozy comfort zone.

Get out of it. Get out there. If you fail, you learn something new. Take a different road tomorrow, but go again. Don’t stop until you get there.

Why don't we jump on a free call to talk about why you think you are failing and how we can change that mindset?