Is Failure An Option?

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.” George Bernard Shaw

Why are we so afraid to fail?

I don’t think children even know what failure is. Or if they do they choose to ignore it. Focussing on their goal instead. Totally absorbed by it. Learning from each time that they fall short.

How many times does a child fall down before they finally learn to walk? 50, 75, or maybe even 100 times? Maybe even more.

Imagine that those little ones gave up after the first, second or even the third try at something new.

But this is exactly what we adults do. Well that’s if we choose to do anything at all. We either give up too soon, don’t try at all, or fail to see the wisdom hidden within the experience itself.

Well I say that in order to grow, to flow, and to find the greatest fulfillment in life we must be open to failure.

We must be willing to fail fast, fail often, and fail now.

How about creating a new meaning for the word fail? Something that will make it a little less scary for all of us.

FAIL – Acronym

Fast Action = Inspired Life

Freedom As Intuitive Learning

Funds Arrive In Loads

Friends Assist In Life

Financial Assets Include Learning

Forge Ahead In Learning

Forever Ascending Into Life

Make up your own and share it below.

We must change our minds in regards to failure. Open ourselves up to the possibilities that it brings. Face the fear that the possibility of failure brings out in us and press ahead anyways.

E. Neville Isdell, the former CEO of Coke said this about failure at an annual meeting, “You will see some failures,” he told the crowd. “As we take more risks, this is something we must accept as part of the regeneration process.”

To regenerate our lives we must be open to failure. To welcome the fits and starts that happen whenever we’re trying something new.

And maybe the reason why we don’t like to fail is because we don’t like to be wrong. Who does?

We invest ourselves deeply into something, hoping and praying that the idea, process or career choice will stick, and when it doesn’t we’re thrown back out into that gray space of the unknown. And no one likes to be there. No one likes not knowing.

But it’s there, while floating around in that unknown space, that we open ourselves up for miracles to happen.

People who embrace failure, even welcome it into their lives are the people who truly succeed in the end.

Even the president Barack Obama knows all about failure, “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

So is failure an option now?

Ian

“Be inspirational”