Come to Terms with your Fear of Failure
Life is not about success after success – life is about rebounding from failure to success to failure repeatedly. However, it could be argued that you will not find success without at least risking failure. Therefore we need to address failure and the fear of failure in our lives.
My life story is a complicated one and if they were handing out big elephant stamps for large-scale failure I would have had ink up to my eyeballs. There have been many times in my life when I have sat with my head in my hands and wondered why everything turned to shit. Was it me? Was I the defective element?
That’s a very human moment. We all do it. Life has a way of pummeling us in the corner anywhere from the very beginning of the first round to the last second of the fifteenth. Sometimes that pummeling is a bitch slap from a circus clown and other times it comes from a Mike Tyson or a Lennox Lewis. The defining feature of failure is not that we experience it, because failure is inevitable, but in how we rebound from it.
Another point about failure we should accept is that failure is heavily correlated to risk. That is why our fear of failure drives us constantly to seek out mediocrity and safe paying 40 hour week droll jobs. Fear of failure impels us by nature to seek out security and avoid ambiguity.
So how do you succeed in life if you accept that you have a fear of failure that limits your ability to achieve beyond a certain limit?
Here is a recipe that might be worth taking on board. The next time you get knocked down I want you to get up and brush yourself off. Take two more steps. Try one more thing. Make educated decisions that include acceptable risk with the understanding that most of the time you will fail.
The outcome of that recipe is that you will sometimes succeed. Or at least you will maybe sometimes succeed.
The trick is in managing acceptable risk and not being battered when it doesn’t pan out… just say “OK this time it didn’t work and I’ll try another idea.”
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:56 am
Very difficult to do but good advice. S
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:33 am
Did I mention you should be expecting mead for Christmas? I have until then to learn how to make mead to a palatable quality… it’s yummy on cold nights and warmed up.
I’ve also been getting back into photography more now that time has relaxed for me with the MBA coming to an end this semester – http://nortypig.com
What have you been up to? Still leadlighting and painting.?
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Did you get the picture of my completed lamp. I was so happy with it. I am in the process of making a little jewellery box for Ash. harder than I thought
. I will do more when I get a grinder, it makes life easier. Glass is pretty expensive too.
Haven’t been painting for a while. I have read about mead, sounds interesting and I think the photography is a good idea.
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Yeh got the photos… very impressive and bigger than I imagined. Looks nice.
I’ve been very quiet in the photography arena while doing the MBA, but its labour intensive, so its just good to be able to get out and about. I have some ideas that need to be followed through… have been in a few exhibitions such as being a jury picked finalist in the last Poimena Art Award for mixed media. That was nice. But now I can start pushing it again.
Ah the grinder… you sound like Lindy (who is after a grinder or even a dremel at the moment)… always a new tool in the artist’s wish list, I’ve found.
Enjoy
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I have a dremel but not sure what to use it for. They should put instructions in so you knnow which attachment does what!
Very confusing. I did cut tiles with one attachment but it wore out after about five tiles. I think its just for little jobs.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Ha ha yeh they are for small jobs. One thing you might enjoy is frosting mirrors… some of my friends used to do it.
You need mirrors… Plus cheap contact… cut out design on contact and stick to mirror. Then you just buy this white cream stuff that you use a flat small wiper to spread over the design… after a few minutes put white stuff back into your container.
Amount of time means how frosted the mirror gets. Or glass I guess.