Your happiness, success, and self-improvement have much to do with failure. That’s why it is critical to have a winning attitude and create positive thinking around your mistakes and setbacks.
Imagine you are waiting to walk across a board that’s 20 feet long, 1 foot wide, and elevated 2 feet off the floor. You feel comfortable about the task at hand. You may wonder how much “arm waving” and “back bending” you’ll do to keep your balance, but you aren’t afraid of falling. Losing your balance simply means you’ll step safely down to a carpeted floor.
After successfully walking across the board, now imagine you’ll do the same thing, only now you’ll be outside; the board will be raised 30 stories above the street.
As you watch the board being raised and imagine yourself walking across it at dizzying heights, discomfort begins creeping in. When you’re in position to walk across the board 300 ft. above the street, something significantly different is happening in your body. Your knees are knocking; your palms are sweaty; you feel nauseated; your heart races and you can hardly breathe. When asked to walk across the board, your voice cracks as you say, “No way!” You can barely move. You are paralyzed by fear.
What’s interesting is that you have the potential to walk across the board. You just had success at the lower level. However, fear now has a grip on you and you’re unable to function in an area where you’re already quite capable.
This could be happening in many areas of your life with regard to stepping into the unknown to reach your next level of success. You have the potential to get there with flying colors; however, you feel like you’re about to walk a plank between buildings at 300 feet. Even though your life, in reality, isn’t threatened at all, your fear of failure has left you completely dysfunctional.
Your fear of failure leads to self-defeating behavior – procrastination and avoidance. In that mode, there’s no way to move forward into unknown territory to have more success and happiness.
Getting unstuck and free from your fear of failure and the unknown requires adopting the following attitude - One way to know how to do it right…is to do it wrong.
Thomas Edison understood that attitude. After a reporter found that Edison had tried 10,000 different things to get the light bulb to work, but still to no avail, he approached Edison. He asked the inventor, “How can you keep going after failing 10,000 times? Isn’t that a bit ridiculous? Shouldn’t you give up?” Edison answered, “You don’t understand. I haven’t failed 10,000 times; I’ve just successfully found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
Thomas Edison understood that mistakes are great teachers. Peak performers don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the mistakes they have made along the way. Your success and self-improvement depends on leaving your comfort zone - doing something you weren’t doing last week or last month, and making some mistakes to further your progress.
Is your fear of failure keeping you from reaching your highest potential and having more success and happiness? If so, adopt a positive, winning attitude about failure and then step out anyway.
Just see what you’re made of. You may find that you’re made of stuff that’s already capable; if not, you’ll find that you’re made of stuff that can quickly learn from mistakes and become capable. One way to know how to do it right…is to do it wrong.
Copyright 2007
This article content is from Bill Dyer’s Award-Winning Book,
How To Bounce Back And Be Happy When Life Blows You Down.
The award-winning book is available at: http://www.bouncebackandbehappy.com
FREE info on “257 Ways To Appreciate This Moment And Create A Life You Love”, is also available at the above website by scrolling down to the Time-Out box.
Bill Dyer
Professional Speaker/Award-Winning Author
http://www.billdyer.com
336-379-0777
Tags: attitude, happiness, Life, Positive, positive attitude, Positive Thinking, success
