Fear of Failure

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever could.” - Suzy Kassem

You’re going to fail at something. Period. It’s a fact. There is something out there you will try to do and you will fail. So wouldn’t you rather at least say you tried. Living in a do nothing world can be boring. Imagine listing all the things you tried to do to get to your dream. Now imagine just saying what your dream is and it’s followed by silence. Why? Because your dreams stayed just that. Dreams. They weren’t turned into goals or aspirations or hopes.

I know.  It sounds scarier trying to get to them and failing miserably at it. But guess what happens after? You pick yourself up and you try another way. Eventually you will get somewhere. That toddler will fall a lot of times but eventually they walk. 

I know. Your dream is huge and the pain of failure could cripple you. But guess what. It won’t. You have survived so much in your life already. There’s no way you won’t survive this. God does not give you more than you can handle. 

I know. It seems safer to just avoid it completely than to go through all of that hassle. But then your dream dies with you. Where is the legacy you were supposed to leave behind? Where are the lives you were supposed to touch? What happens to the rest of your life? 

Playing it safe until you die is not what you were made for. You were made to live and failure is part of that. You could fail a test at school. You could fail to get to your job on time. You could fail to save enough for a trip. You could fail to understand the views of others. You could fail to catch that ball. Just as much as you can succeed at anything there’s a chance you could fail. But taking that chance is the key. 

Maybe past failure is the reason you never want to try again. I’m sorry it failed. I’m sorry it hurts to your core. I’m sorry it causes doubt in everything you do. But that failure is about to define your future. 

Bill Gates took a risk of dropping out of Harvard University to start a new business with a friend. However, that huge jump failed. After 6 years of investing everything into it, it slowly died with a loss of $3494. Imagine if he had stopped there. Instead he took his lessons from Traf-O-Data and created Microsoft. The company that would make him the youngest self made billionaire at the time. He learned from his failure. 

JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times. She was an unemployed single mother living off of welfare. After working on this book for years she didn’t let that stop her. She was persistent after her failure and it paid off.

Anna Wintour became Editor-in-Chief at Vogue. However, during her early years in the fashion industry, she was actually fired from Harper’s Bazaar because she was told that she would “never understand the American market”. She could have taken that failure and gone home. Instead, it motivated her. She focused on her dream despite failure. 

Oprah was demoted to a writing and reporting position at a tv station earlier in her career, but it was in this role that she learned her passion for stories of human interest. This discovery eventually led to Oprah getting her own super-successful morning talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ran for 25 years. She was directed to her potential by failure. 

We learn more from our failures than we ever could from our successes. Don’t be afraid to fail.