Fear of Failure

When we list our desires, wants and life goals, we often omit "failure." We must fail if we are to risk living passionate lives. We live in a culture that has become soft, in that it conditions us to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. There is a lack of appreciation for the wisdom that hardship bestows. There is an illusion that it is possible to live in a world where things come easily and failure can be avoided, and if your life is not "this ideal," there is something is wrong with you. We will naturally take the path of least resistance, clinging to the familiar, staying within our restricted safe places in an attempt to control the outcome.

Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." This great wartime leader got ousted after the war. So, the rewards for becoming a fuller, more complete, human being may not come externally, and if they do, the rewards may be temporary, as it was in Churchill's case. We need to be able to acknowledge, and value our courage and resilience during crisis. When our sense of worthiness is established from within, we are not at the mercy of what others do, or think!

Many of us come into adulthood ill prepared to have a full life. The opportunity resulting from failure is the potential for us to grow into more complete human beings. However, not all of us grow as the result of failure. Some who experience failure give up, and never fully recover. They become too fragile inside to get up off their knees.

When a crisis occurs many become rigid and more deeply entrenched in false beliefs. The acceptance of limiting beliefs, in order to stay within their comfort zone, is sad. Some people shirk responsibility for the condition of their lives, jobs, relationships, and other actions. They blame their pain on others and do not examine their roles in the systems of which they are a part. Others shrink their immediate world in order to make it more manageable. All of these beliefs are equally fragile and false.

Whenever we want to manifest something new in our lives, it has to go through a process. It is analogous to baby learning to walk. What an act of courage. A baby takes a step forward, falls sideways, pulls up, two steps forward, falls backwards etc. Visualize the process. Pretty soon the baby is taking off. If we waited until we become adults to walk, many of us would still be on our knees. We would fear failure. Everything we change in our lives goes through such steps to some degree. Give yourself permission to go backwards, forwards, sideways and to fail. Approach undertakings as if you were learning a new instrument; you'll have to focus and practice for quite a while, before you manifest recitals. Overcoming entrenched habits, behaviors, and beliefs take time as you are essentially rewiring your brain.

In all of our lives, there will be failure. Temporarily we may forget that there were good times. However, when we accept that failure is a part of the process of living and learn from the experience, we become more than we could have been without failure. We are then in a place of trusting ourselves to create the life we want. The life we manifest may have darkness at times, but it will be one we can fully live, an authentic passionate life!

"I know the path: it is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword. I rejoice to walk on it. I weep when I slip. God's word is: He who strives never perishes. I have implicit faith in that promise, though, therefore from my weakness I fail a thousand times, I will not lose faith"... Gandhi, 1980


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Forwarded by Apple
Photos by KALI