If you ask a 5-year-old what they want to be when they grow up, they will tell you something along the lines of a ballerina, a movie star or a doctor. If you ask that same child what they want to be as a teenager, those things start to shift. When asked why, most will say that they didn’t want to go to school for that long or they were “just a kid” and didn’t know what they wanted. While there is some truth here, imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world where you couldn’t fail. Would little girls still want to be ballerinas because they haven’t been told they weren’t good enough? Would kids still want to become movie stars because they hadn’t been told they didn’t have the talent? Would more people want to go into the medical field because they hadn’t done poorly in chemistry?
We’re all terrified to fail. We don’t raise our hands if we don’t know the answer. We won’t vote when the professor asks us for a show of hands for the correct answer because we don’t want to be wrong. It’s so engrained into our minds that failure is something you can’t come back from and we should naturally be scared to death of it.
Failure comes in all shapes and sizes, but we all fail regularly, even in the small things like loving our neighbor well instead of getting caught up in our own lives. Believe it or not, the people in your life that you think have it “all together” still fail regularly.
So yes, we’re all terrified down to our core to fail at anything. But I have good news for you. Failure is not final.
My band director once told me that it was okay for me to fail because it showed that I was trying. So often we shy away from doing anything risky or out of the norm because we don’t want to mess up or get it wrong.
But friend, it’s much better to have tried and failed than to not try at all or simply just give up.
Why are we so afraid of failure?
So you didn’t get the grade you wanted, you didn’t get into the school you were hoping for, or you didn’t make the team. Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team. It took JK Rowling was rejected by nine publishers before a publishing house signed her on for the Harry Potter series. Producers told Oprah freaking Winfrey that she would never make it in the industry. These incredible people are known for their success stories today but started as complete and utter failures in the eyes of those around them. Keep your head up and keep going, You can do this. Let this experience, this failure, push you forward.
Keep in mind that failure is an event, not who you are. You are more than this setback.
If you have made it through this whole article and still don’t believe me, here are some quotes from people smarter than me that agree with me.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy
“It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” - Ellen DeGeneres
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” - J.K. Rowling
