You are a Rock Star! Development happens when we are up against it. You took another giant step towards achieving your goals.

Love,

Bob

“No mistake or failure is as bad as to stop and not try again.”
-John Wanamaker

Great job, Gini.
-Lois

Kevin

hopefully, here is a new slant: where did we acquire fear of failure? it’s not intrinsic– toddlers learning to walk have no fear of failing (or climbing a counter to get a cookie), they just focus on getting what they want til they get it.

Fear of failure is not fear of the failure itself; if it was, no one would ever do a crossword or sudoku puzzle ever again. what happens is, we learn to be afraid of what other people think of us when we display imperfection. We associate shame with failing to meet some arbitrary standard within a limited time frame. THAT is what we fear. it’s not about the event, it’s about the social consequences.

failure is always an arbitrary judgment made in the context of arbitrary time limits.

what’s worse, in school we learn to avoid failure, i.e., the resulting disapproval from authority for not doing tasks perfectly, rather than failure recovery, which would make us more independent. only in sports do we teach a few kids how to recover from failure.

what is going to happen from this momentous collective economic experience is that a lot of people are going to find inner resources they never knew they had. once inoculated, the fear of failure will leave us, and with that comes new and far greater personal empowerment.

I’m all for failure. failure is good. people who don’t know failure have never tried to do anything really hard. they exaggerate its power. I love failure, i expect failure, because it is a predictable temporary by-product of doing something really worthwhile.

I am a successful self-publisher only because i failed miserably at it several times first. now, I look around and see so many people trying to avoid failure in reaching a high goal, but the only way to do avoid failure is to follow a known path, which assures mediocrity . . . and . . . failure.

congrats to you for your first big failure recovery. it has more meaning to me and my spirit than all the failure avoidance in the world. –jl

http://www.justinlocke.com

I’ve found the best thing about failure is that you get to see the real person underneath all of the trappings of politeness, political etiquette, and general niceties.

Anyone can be calm and successful when the cards are falling their way. When the going becomes unbearable is when you find out who they really are and how they handle it.

When you fail, it’s an opportunity to take a look at how you handled the adversity, how you treated those around you, and what direction you’re heading afterward.

It’s never too late to correct your own behavior and make certain that next time you fail that you learn from it and become a better person.

In these times I share with people that there are so many things in our lives that are beyond our scope of control and that failing at something may not be attributed to anything that we did or didn’t do. What we can control however is how we react to the situations that we do find ourselves in and that a persons true strenghts come from the way they handle themselves, particularly in difficult or adverse times.

As humans, we try so desperately to control as much of our lives as we possibly can, when in reality there are so many things that are beyond our control. The one thing that is not beyond our control is how we act. Though the message may seem simple it is truly powerful and I thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Ljuba

This post was mentioned on Twitter by EconomyHeroes: It’s OK to Fail by @ginidietrich via @whengrowthstall http://ow.ly/yPtQ...