Failure is a heart-breaking experience and many of us would rather do nothing if that will help avoid this unhealthy experience. I do understand and know how it feels to fail. When that fantastic money making idea pops in your head, you need to pay attention to all the doubts and negative thoughts that will harass your mind.
Suddenly that amazing idea will be squashed by all the possible things that could go wrong. Before you know it, you’ve given up before you’ve even tried! I have been there several times and yet, it has not scared me from challenging my doubts. Let me at least try and prove my doubts are wrong. What amazing opportunities are you cheating yourself out of because your unfounded fear.
In my article ‘The Fear Of Failure Cripples Success, How To Over Come It’ I wrote that, “Many have come to recognise and accept that the greatest enemy of mankind is our own minds personified by the fear of failure. Even the strongest minds of our time cannot swank of there not being a single time where the fear of failure has curtailed their thoughts on achieving that which they believe in.
The fear of failure is a natural disease living with the human mind. Its precincts are not restricted and can far stretch to affect anything we set our minds on to achieve. It strikes like an authoritative thunder which sets out in a clear light what would happen should you fail on a desire journey of progress.”
Though the fear of failure is a strong reason why some people fail before they even start, thus, they do not go through with their dreams at all so to avoid failing, other things to be considered below glaringly make us fail before we even start. We must avoid these things if we indeed desire to succeed in life.
When You Pay More Attention To Those Who Have Failed
Success or failure is NOT like an STD where you would definitely get some when you sleep with an infected person (without protection). You will not be successful simply because you hang around with successful people unless you have the mind set and you are ready to do some real work.
Same way you will not fail simply because you know so many people who have failed. Unless you have not learnt anything from their mistakes and you would be doing the same thing that caused them to fail. Even that, where you would fail may not be the spot they failed.
Why am I saying this? Many of us have the habit of looking around to find those who have failed before we start a journey. And after spotting as many failures as we can find, we begin to think we will be the next on the list of failure.
How do you expect to achieve anything when you have already failed yourself even before you have met your first hurdle or made your first buck?…Of course things will go wrong, money may even be lost but to assume that the most successful people who live amongst us have not passed through these hurdles is totally wrong. What they have done is that, they have not let what went wrong or what others failed at from stopping them to reach their goals.
Instead of paying attention to those who have failed so to scare and kill your spirit, look at those who have excelled and draw inspiration from them. I am not saying you should totally ignore those who have failed, but only give them relevance so to learn from their mistakes.
You have to know that, you won’t fail simply because Mr A. failed. And you won’t be successfully simply because Mr B. did the same thing and he was successful. The outcome of your journey solely depends on your continuous efforts, hard work, positive actions and the lessons you can learn from both Mr. A and Mr. B.
When You Have No Confidence In Your Self
Having self-confidence and believing in a journey you are about to make is a pre-condition to being successful. Without robust confidence, you are likely to slide off the cliff. After all, you had no confidence and you believed you had already failed before even starting.
For you not to be part of the many who fail before they start, you must be positive about a journey you are about to take and believe in yourself as a person who will successfully complete the journey.
Robust self-confidence in this respect does not mean you should want to climb the tallest mountain in the world’. And then proceed in confidence to climb it. You will fall flat on your back because that is not self-confidence; it is ‘arrogant and ignorant’ confidence.
When You Consistently See Yourself As At A Disadvantage
There are two sets of disadvantaged people in life. Those who are able to use their disadvantage to their advantage and those who permanently reside in their disadvantaged situation by consistently reminding themselves of it.
It’s likely that if you fall in the second category, you are unaware you reside there. You need to be aware of how your thinking patterns affect your progress and success….