Failure is not a loss. Everybody experiences it. Your mom, dad, friends, peers, colleagues, professors, neighbors, business people, politicians. Everybody fails.
Why are we so fearful of failure? This fear keeps us from stepping out and living our lives. This fear keeps us from trying things we've always wanted to. This fear of failing (who?) keeps us from making a difference.
Often our fear of failure stems from a failure in the past. Because of something we did wrong (or failed) we disappointed somebody we loved and this, my dear friends, is what sparked the initial fear of failure in our hearts and minds.
We tend to forget that others fail. So when they do we treat them far too harsh. We have expectations on how people should act and speak and live their life, so when they do not exceed or meet our expectations, we snap and thus spark an even deeper fear of failure in them.
What we fear we do not hesitate to pass on to others because we wish for them to experience the same exact thing we're going through. We do not want to be alone.
I stated at the beginning, that failure is not a loss. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Some things that we fail at can bring tremendous loss. The failure I am talking about is when we dream and it doesn't necessarily work out the way we mean. Sometimes we fall short and don't grasp the score on that quiz we'd been studying hours for. Sometimes we try a new idea out and it flops. After so many of these stepping out and it not working...we tend to barricade ourselves behind walls of safety so that our wings cannot flap and we cannot soar into a dream-filled sky. We limit ourselves, concluding that our ideas are not worthy and will only end in free falling from the clouds to become the laughingstock of the town.
But who are you failing if you do not dream? Yourself. You are selling yourself short. You are keeping your beautiful, grand ideas inside caves rather than being free and making a difference.
You need to set your dreams free.
Think big. Think great. Think beautifully. Dream.
Do NOT, by any means, let the fear of failure drag your dreams down to the dirt.
And when you do fail (as we all do), dust yourself off, and dream again.
