Whatever happened to that famous saying, "if at first you don’t succeed try and try again"? Yet how afraid are we of failing? Sometimes we do not even start on a new adventure because we area afraid of failing.
Try for a different job? Oh no, can’t do that. Take a different route, cook a new meal, experiment with new seeds, learn to ride a motorcycle, ski dive, exercise...
If we do not have the courage to try out small things such as trying a new food, how can we ever find the courage it takes to leave one career and start something totally different? Or to learn Mandarin and work in China, or to volunteer to work in Rwanda.
What about the courage to start running for a marathon. Or add swimming and cycling to your running to try your hand at a triathlon. What about finding a new hobby like paragliding, or wind surfing, or learn a new game?
For each one of these activities and challenges there are many small steps of trial and error that will get you there. You don’t need to immediately enter a marathon. You can run a few 5km races first. In fact you don’t even need to run, you can take part in walks. Try out little events and build up to the full one.
All it takes is for you to have the courage to fail once in a while. Take some time to learn to pronounce that Mandarin word, or learn to write a character. You will get it wrong many times because it is so different from our western language and alphabet. But what a wonderful feeling when you get it right because you know you have achieved something big.
Didn’t quite finish that first marathon? You will have learned from the experience. You will have learned that you didn’t drink enough, shouldn’t have run in new shoes, needed something to stop the chafing, a hat to keep cool, more training or better nutrition. There will be many new lessons. And some of those lessons will extend further than your running. They will be life lessons that will help you in other areas.
Regrettably we start off our educational experience learning that failure is bad for us. When we fail at school we are punished. We might be moved to another class, or even have to repeat the year. We certainly will not get the certificate that the valedictorian received.
If we fail at school we will not be asked to make the final speech. We will not have our name on a plaque in the entrance. We will not play in the first team and we have no chance of attending a good University. Failing in school is not good for you.
The work environment is seldom any different. You don’t get promotion if you lose a big sale or a big customer. You are not encouraged to fail at anything. And the people who get promoted are usually the ones who have less failures.
With this kind of learning, it’s hardly surprising that we don’t try out new things or challenge ourselves to reach loftier goals. Failure is bad. Can’t do failure. So we don’t even try. However, holding ourselves back because of fear of failure is the ultimate failure.
What we must remember is that success follows failure. If we learn from our mistakes and always strive to do better we can master even most challenging tasks. The mastery of any skills is the culmination of many failures and successes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment