Most of us learn to fear failure and avoid it at all costs. During our quest for financial freedom, however, well encounter plenty of failures. Usually, we learn from them and move on. Sadly, the fear of failure is also used as a convenient excuse for some folks who dig themselves into a deep financial hole and are looking for any reason to avoid the hard work of overcoming their oppressive debt.
The bottom line: Success earned in spite of failure is the ultimate reward. Failure, in its purest form, will only become reality for those who are willing to accept defeat.
Photo Credit: cdharrison
You not only learn from your own mistakes but you can also learn from others’. I think mistakes and consequent potential failure can be considered a fact of life. It would be nice though to not make mistakes and avoid failure but that can be pretty hard to do.
Not only is it fear of failure, sometimes it’s fear of hard work. Working oneself out of a big financial mess takes some diligent budgeting and hard work. I know plenty of people who like things to be easy and when they’re not, they just give up.
Learning from your own failure is something we all must do to find success. I won’t let fear get in my way of success.
I believe everyone makes mistakes! In fact, we learn more from our mistakes than success. Successful people make mistakes just like everyone else, but they learn from it and find a way to succeed. If fear prevents you from trying, that is worse that failing!
If we could only find a way to not emotionalize failure, it wouldn’t be failure at all. It would just be something that didn’t work, and nothing more.
Emotionalizing is what causes the fear that paralizes us and keeps us from moving on. Going forward is the only constructive course in life, and somehow we have to make a default setting. Especially when we’re tempted to camp out on our “failures” and beat ourselves up over them.
great point! Thanks!
You know it wasn’t until I went into sales that I truly embraced failure as a positive thing. When your hit rate to sales is 20-30%, you have to fail A LOT in order to succeed and hit your metrics.
Now I view failure as my path to success. Even as an engineer where you have to fail a bunch before you find a technical solution that works, it didn’t have as big an impact until I had to start failing all the freakin time. It’s warped but it really has helped my perspective on things.
Len, it sounds like you read Seth Godin’s latest book – Poke the Box. If you didn’t, it sounds like you’d love it.
Definitely agree with this statement. Len – I think you’d love that book.
@Doable: I agree. The only way to avoid them is to never take a chance on anything, but then, what fun is that?
@LittleHouse: And that’s why quitters never prosper. 🙂
@Retire: “Don’ let fear get in the way of success.” Ooo, I like that!
@krantcents: Yes! Successful people take risks and, as a result, those risks often result in failure. Thomas Edison, who I believe holds more patents than almost anyone (if may even be #1), admitted to over 8000 failures in his lifetime. Many of those failures were crucial to the eventual discovery of new inventions.
@Kevin: Very well said, Kevin. You know, as an engineer working in research and development, I’ve learned to accept that not all of my ideas are always going to work. It took me awhile to not take the failures as a reflection on me personally. I also realize that failures provide us with valuable lessons that help us grow. For example, they teach what doesn’t work.
@FirstGen: Again, well said. I totally empathize with the engineering comment! LOL
@Daniel: Never read Seth Godin’s book, but I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip! 🙂
Sometimes it’s the things that scare us the most that turn out to be the best for us. I have learned this lesson many times.
I think a fear of failure is common when you have a family and consider starting a cash intensive business…but fear of failure just for the sake of failing, we need to be a bit more bold than that!
Love this! Failure is one of my favorite things, because it’s eventually followed by success 🙂
Somebody has been reading HBR this week. The entire edition was about failure, and how many people fear it too much to take risk, or the inverse, don’t learn from their failures.
I had to look up HBR! LOL I assume you meant Harvard Business Review? Nope. I’m not worthy to read that. 😉
I have come to realize that I wasn’t scared of failure but what others would say when I failed and was obsessed with looking good. When I got over that (rather recently too) I was able to really just go after what I really wanted. Because really people are free to say what they want.
Very encouraging post and comments!
IME, the fear of failure was directly proportional to the lack of preparedness. My fear has been a good and true indicator that I have not done due diligence– whether in market research, emergency fund/ general prep, etc… “I am afraid to fail, bc if (WHEN!) I fail… (x,y,&z will surely happen, bc I have done nothing about those aspects yet.”
So, back to a better plan with responsible safeties in place, and hard work done, and backup plans B, C, D, etc… then on with the show, and why fear anything?
Sometimes “failure” isn’t.
Most young patent examiners in my day went to law school,at night, preparing to be patent attorneys. I “failed” at that – didn’t do well (I hate formal study), but one of my professors helped me with a contract to buy our first house. That led to another “failure”: the house was “impacted” by new plans for an expressway nearby and we couldn’t sell it. We rented it and discovered the possibilities for real estate investing.
That was during the late 1950s through the early sixties.
That went well and eventually made early retirement possible.
So, “opportunity” sometimes looks like “failure”, early on.