‘I suck’ was what I was thinking.
It was the first time I had really failed at anything and I remember it so well. I was in my second year of lower school and we had just made a spelling test. It was after lunch and my teacher was standing outside the school, handing back all the papers as we walked back into school. It was a hot day and there were kids playing behind me. I walk up to my teacher, I see him looking for my paper, finding it, handing it over to me and when I look at it I get the biggest shock in the world.
There was a big red circled 5 on my test, which meant I had failed. I’m not sure if it was exactly the first time I failed at any test, but this memory still sticks in my head, because it was the first time I was confronted with the feeling of failure.
You see as I was holding that paper as a little girl, not knowing what the ‘real’ world would be like, to me at that moment it felt like my whole life was over. I was never going to achieve anything in life again. For me that was the moment my fear of failure started.
Now I’m not going to give a whole speech about how as kids in school we are being taught that failing is bad, that we should avoid it at all cost by getting good grades and how wrong that teaching is. However I would like to say for me it took a long time to learn that failure is necessary in life and it is important to fail so we can learn and grow.
It wasn’t until I worked for a company later in life where we had to give each other and ourselves feedback on regularly basis, I started learning that if we fail, we actually really learn something. Therefore failing is not bad, it is a tool to get ahead in life and develop ourselves.
You see failure sucks. It can hurt and it’s not fun, but somehow we missed to whole point that we fail in the first place so that we can do it right the second time around.
Yet now I see so many people around me being so afraid that what they are going to do is not going to turn out right, that it’s not going to go according to plan and that they are going to fall flat on their face while trying new things, so therefore they are not even trying. And they are giving up on their dreams and goals in life because of it.
But the thing is, I’m still here. And you’re still. So what’s really all the fuzz about? Why are we so occupied all the time by being so afraid of failing. It’s stopping us from doing things, it’s stopping us from taking the right actions. And actually we are starting to take actions that are really not good for us and in the end it’s going to bring us somewhere which is far away from where we actually want to go. And all because we are so afraid of failure.
In this video below I will tell you about four things that could help you get over your fear of failure and help you get started on acting on your goals and dreams, so you can create a life you love.
https://youtu.be/9-4jQOFM2T4[
