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“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed—Michael Jordan.”
F • A • I • L • U • R • E.
Why is it that we’re so afraid of failure? The thought of it has become so threatening to us that we’ve gone on to not going after things we want because we’re so afraid of the possible negative outcome it will have and us looking bad in the process. We begin to create stories of our failures about what they REALLY mean about who WE are. We get rejected by the person we like—I’m worthless. We don’t get hired for the job we want—I’m stupid. We then turn these stories it our reality, determining what we think WILL be in our future. “That girl turned me down which means I’m worthless which means every girl thinks I’m worthless so I’m never going to ask a girl out again because I’m going to get rejected and I must save myself from looking bad.” We NEED the power to know we will be successful in whatever we attempt in order to proceed which now makes us trapped in the STORY of our failure.
Of course, we can never be sure of future outcomes and things still may not go our way, but we’ve gone on to preventing ourselves from even trying if we believe our outcome will result in a failure. To us, we think the most power comes from our successes but actually, they come from our moments of being COURAGEOUS and from all failures. Standing for something in the face of it’s possible failure is what the most powerful people are actually made of.
You will never get anywhere in life by playing it safe. We all have one life to live and it’s too short to hide by the sidelines wondering “what if?” It took me so long to decide to start a blog because I was so stuck on its potential failure and looking bad. Yet one of the most courageous things I’ve done for myself was facing my fear and doing this—and look where it’s gotten me?.
For this week’s #inspilaine I encourage you to be courageous in something you want—big or small— and realizing no failure is really a failure—it’s just an opportunity for you to find your future success.
