FEAR OF FAILURE (below is a summary of some of the take home points about failure that Ive read in various self help books over the past few months. Good stuff to think about if you ask me. Cant go wrong thinking about his stuff.) The number one fear in the world is the fear of failure, which manifests itself in such ways as the fear of being judged, fear of embarrassment, fear of getting started, fear of public speaking, and fear of the unknown. The fear of failure is the largest obstacle people face to their own success. I can think of so many things in my life that I have already avoided because of the fear of failing or not measuring up to the perceived status quo. Got to kill it. There is a widely held myth that suggests creative geniuses rarely fail. This couldnt be further from the truth and is actually the complete opposite of what is true. Creative geniuses, from artists like Mozart to scientists like Darwin to tech guys like Steve Jobs, are prolific when it comes to failure. Their ultimate strokes of genius dont come about because they succeed more often, or because theyre more talented or because they were lucky to be in the right place at the the right time. Their success comes from their overwhelming willingness to fail. They take more shots at the goal and, not surprisingly, score more often. The mathematics of innovation is simple: if you want more success, you have to be willing to shrug off more failure. Failure sucks but it instructs. There is an inescapable link between failure and innovation. World renowned Stanford psychologist, Albert Bandura, used the process of guided mastery--a series of small successes--to help people gain courage and overcome severe phobias like social phobia and agoraphobia. What would have been nearly impossible to accomplish in one giant leap became manageable in small steps, with the guidance of a mentor. Basically, you gradually increase the level of the challenge to help people transcend the fear of failure. This nourishing environment is what school is supposed to provide but unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, school can provide the polar opposite: often exacerbating the fear of failure. The biggest hurdle in overcoming our fears is always going down the slide for the first time. Its important to just do it and to do it often. The more slides you go down, and the more varied the slides are, the faster you will overcome your fear of slides. Similarly, in business, the number of product cycles youve gone through(called mileage) trumps the number of years of experience. Learning cycles maximize success. Take the twenty year veteran of the auto industry who works several years on each new vehicle before it goes into market. He will have experienced far fewer cycles than a young kid start-up entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley working just two years total on mobile apps that ship every couple of months. The young entrepreneur will go through more rapid innovation cycles than the experienced auto veteran over a much shorter time frame, and thus will gain familiarity with process and confidence in his ability to assess new ideas at a much accelerated rate. And that confidence results in reduced anxiety in the face of ambiguity when bringing new ideas into the world. It is in this sort of nourishing environment that innovative ideas like Twitter are rapidly being born. The Silicon Valley has become a crockpot for steaming out creative endeavors like Twitter, and doing so in Superman-speed fashion. It takes courage to leave the land of certain outcomes and the comfort of what we know to try a new approach or share a wild sounding idea. One of the major reasons we have trouble doing this is because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. We need to let go of comparison to others because no human being is identical and there is no set in stone path that determines your success. Comparison is a complete waste of time. And worse, when we do compare ourselves, were in the habit of comparing ourselves to the end game, not the process of how the end game came into existence. For example, we dont compare ourselves to the Steve Jobs of 30 years ago that started out in a garage and had all sorts of ups and downs along the way. Instead, we compare ourselves to the billionaire Steve Jobs that started Apple and is a world famous creative genius. This is the end game. And then we say something like I could never do that. Actually you could. Yes you could succeed at the same level as Steve Jobs, if that is what you wanted for yourself, and maybe even more. Its really up to you man. Success is determined by your belief in your capacity to create positive change and the courage to take action. Success and creativity, far from requiring skills and genetically predisposed gifts like high IQ, depends on what YOU believe you can do with the talents and skills you already have; what you were born with. You can build your innate talents and skills through small victories until you have creative confidence in yourself. After all, courage is only the accumulation and end result of all the small steps we take towards it. Once you acquire true courage, you become unstoppable. Poke the world and watch it pop in your favor. Focus on the process and forget about the end game. The end game will take care of itself if you take care of the process. Make a difference in the world. Believe you can and you will. Really visualize yourself succeeding in your imagination every day. Crystallize your vision and your goals in your mind and on paper every day. Your imagination is literally your best friend. Use it to create the world YOU want to live in. Stop living in the caged and default society that organizations force upon you and control you with for the sole purpose of taking your money; financial gain. Attack life and literally grab it by the balls by winning small victories; something as small as getting yourself in shape and getting a sweet haircut is a good place to start. Build from there.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:03:01 +0000
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