|
Get over your fear of failure
Monday, 12 June 2006
Nothing stings quite like failing. This is especially true when it happens in front of people we like and admire. Our ears go red, our face feels hot, and we swear "I'll never do that again".
When most people look at the successful among us, they see someone who supposedly rarely fails. Success, after all, is the opposite of failure.
The world is full of people who love to call those who are trying but failing "losers", "jerks" and "stuff-ups". After venting a little anger such people then go home to their own often unremarkable lives.
Yet if you look back on the past of most successful people, you find it littered with failure. The successful usually don't just have more triumphs than most, but also more falls. Because the path to victory is almost always paved with failure. They fail because they try harder. And they get up again after falling down.
Let me give you an example from my own life.
When I decided I wanted to move into an IT career, because it seemed more satisfying and better paying than what I'd previously been doing, I had all sorts of failures along the way. Some of these were quite emotionally difficult, and would probably have caused many to give up.
When I first started looking for a job, I sent out hundreds of applications. Most of these I never heard about again, but occasionally I got invited along to do an interview. Often, these interviews were quite humiliating. People who were much smarter about computers than me seemed to enjoy making me look small and insignificant.
"How dare you come here and waste my time with your lack of skills and experience," they seemed to be saying to me. "Don't you know that we are experts and you're just a useless amateur?"
Despite feeling horrible about these failures, I kept sending out applications and going to interviews. Eventually, I managed to impress someone enough to be given a job in IT.
But almost immediately that I started, my manager felt as if I was a bit of a burden. I was still learning the ropes, and he thought I might do something that would get him in trouble. So he organized some meetings with other people in the department to see if he could pass me off to someone else.
"What are we going to do with Paul, who has no skills and experience and will probably always be that way?" was the underlying message.
At night, I'd read up on programming languages and IT infrastructure. I sat vendor exams and looked through other people's code. I was learning quickly, although the only person who realized that was me.
Within a few months, I'd done some good work and my manager forgot that he'd wanted to dump me. He started singing my praises to others in the team. He once saw me as a failure, but now I was on my way to being a success.
Since then I've never looked back. I've had well-paid IT jobs in a number of cities around the world, and never have trouble finding this kind of work when I want it.
The early humiliations are a distant memory. But at the time they were horrible. I had no idea that eventually I'd succeed, and sometimes I used to wonder why I was bothering at all. But I kept plugging away and eventually the failures turned to victory.
This is one of the key determinants of success in almost any field. When people see someone who's a winner, they tend to just assume he was born that way. One day he popped into the world and simply started beating everybody.
But usually, winners start off as losers just like everyone else. The difference is that they're strong enough to look past the early disgraces towards the possibility of a brighter future. They can grin in the face of defeat, because they know that each failure brings them one step closer to success.
You should take steps to get over your fear of failure, if you have it. The best way is simply to go out and face it. Don't love to lose, but accept it as a step on the way to winning.
Be determined to overcome the humiliation of failure, and you'll go further down the path of success than most.
 | Why it's so hard to find a satisfactory long-term partner | | Almost all of us have a deep yearning to find a significant other to share our lives with. For those of us without one, it can become an all-consuming problem. A single person can meet someone who they could form a relationship with almost every day, yet years can go by without such a relationship being formed. Why is it so difficult? |  | Turn your hopes and dreams into something concrete | | What's the big difference between those who we consider successful and those we don't? There's plenty of smart, fun, talented people out there, so why aren't they all successful? The difference isn't really between those who have the best attitude and dreams, and those who don't. It's between those who produce something concrete from their dreams and those who don't. |  | Look up from your navel every now and again to marvel at the beauty and glory of the universe | | Let's face it, most of what we humans obsess over is pretty pathetic. The smallest insult can have us fuming for weeks, the tiniest inconvenience seems overwhelming, and our little problems fill our heads as if we were the most important person that was ever born. | | If you work and take risks, it's possible to build a good life for yourself | | When I consider my life at the moment, it's really pretty good. I'm happily married, make plenty of money, and live in my favorite place in the world. For years now, I've been in a position where I can do pretty much whatever I want. It wasn't always that way though. |  | Common sense is over-rated | | One thing that's held as a deep belief by many people is the wisdom of 'common-sense' or 'conventional wisdom'. They hold it up as the ultimate truth to which we all should aspire. | | Take some time to reflect on how astonishing it all is | | Sometimes we all feel as if we're living grey little lives. We want to be moving galaxies, but instead we're stuck in traffic, feeling ill, assigned boring tasks, or filling in tax returns. No wonder everyone feels a bit down every now and again. | | Don't justify bad deeds by comparing yourself to others | | There's a psychological trap which pretty much everyone is in danger of falling into at some time or another. It's a mind-trick we use on ourselves to justify deeds we're not proud of. We simply compare ourselves to others who've done something worse. | | The world is made up of systems | | Everywhere you look in the universe, you see systems. There's solar systems, atomic systems and energy systems. On Earth, we have evolution, the climate, and food chains. And humans have superimposed on top of these natural systems such things as legal systems, political systems and financial systems. | | Time is short | | My father died of cancer at the age of 59. He had a fairly healthy lifestyle. He didn't smoke, ate well, exercised and drank moderately. Yet still he died at a relatively young age. It can happen to anyone at any time really. | | Get yourself some allies | | People I know who are introverted often tell me they don't really understand why outgoing people expend so much time and effort on socialising. They see it all as being a bit shallow and a waste of effort. But I think they miss the point in a lot of ways. |
New articles are being added all the time, so make sure you bookmark Paul's Tips and come back.
|
|