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We live in is the world we choose to live in, whether consciously or unconsciously. Most of the time it’s unconsciously. If we choose paradise, that’s what we get. If we choose misery, we get that, too. We see the real picture of life according to the way our beliefs are aligned. Our beliefs are specific, consistent organizational approaches to perception. They’re the fundamental choices we make about how to perceive our lives and thus how to live them. They’re how we turn on or turn off our brain. So the first step toward success is to find the beliefs that guide us toward the outcomes we want.
The path to success consists of knowing your outcome, taking action, knowing what results you’re getting, and having the flexibility to change until you’re successful. The same is true of beliefs. You have to find the beliefs that support your outcome—the beliefs that get you where you want to go. If your beliefs don’t do that, you have to throw them out and try something new.
Fear of Failure in Our Culture
There are only results. Most people in our culture have been programmed to fear this thing called failure. Yet, all of us can think of times when we wanted one thing and got another. Whatever we get, it’s either supporting our goal or dragging away from our goals.
People always succeed in getting some sort of result. The super successes of our culture aren’t people who do not fail, but simply people who know that if they try something and it doesn’t give them what they want, they’ve had a learning experience. They use what they’ve learned and simply try something else. They take some new actions and produce some new results.
Think about it. What is the one asset, the one benefit you have today over yesterday? The answer, of course, is experience. People who fear failure make internal representations of what might not work in advance. This is what keeps them from taking the very action that could ensure the accomplishment of their desires. Are you afraid of failure? Well, how do you feel about learning? You can learn from every human experience and can thereby always succeed in anything you do.
Don’t Attach Negative Emotions
Mark Twain once said, “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.” He’s right. People who believe in failure are almost guaranteed a mediocre existence. Failure is something that is just not perceived by people who achieve greatness. They don’t dwell on it. They don’t attach negative emotions to something that doesn’t work. Emotions either positive or negative influence our subconscious mind. Once these emotions sink into the subconscious mind, they start controlling our life.
Just look at this real-life example of a man’s life history. A man who
- Failed in business at age 21.
- Was defeated in a legislative race at age 22.
- Failed again in business at age 24.
- Overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26.
- Had a nervous breakdown at age 27.
- Lost a congressional race at age 34.
- Lost a congressional race at age 36.
- Also Lost a senatorial race at age 45.
- Failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47.
- Lost a senatorial race at age 49.
- Was elected president of the United States at age 52.
The man’s name was Abraham Lincoln. Could he have become president if he had seen these events of his life as failures? It’s not likely. There’s a famous story about Thomas Edison. After he’d tried 9,999 times to perfect the light bulb and hadn’t succeeded, someone asked him, “Are you going to have ten thousand failures?” He answered, “I didn’t fail. I just discovered another way not to invent the electric light bulb.” He had discovered how another set of actions had produced a different result.
“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare”
Failures – The Most Valuable Lessons
Winners, leaders, masters—people with personal power—all understand that if you try something and do not get the outcome you want, it’s simply feedback. You use that information to make finer distinctions about what you need to do to produce the results you desire. Buckminster Fuller once wrote, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.” Sometimes we learn from our mistakes, sometimes from the mistakes of others. Take a minute to reflect on the five greatest so-called “failures” in your life. What did you learn from those experiences? Chances are they were some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned in your life.
Fuller uses the metaphor of a ship’s rudder. He says when the rudder of a ship is angled to one side or another, the ship tends to keep rotating beyond the helmsman’s intention. He has to correct the rotation, moving it back toward the original direction in a never-ending process of action and reaction, adjustment and correction. Picture that in your mind—a helmsman on a quiet sea, gently guiding his boat toward its destination by coping with thousands of inevitable deviations from its course. It’s a lovely image, and it’s a wonderful model for the process of living successfully. But most of us don’t think that way. Every error, every mistake, tends to take on emotional baggage. It’s a failure. It reflects badly on us.
Way Ahead
Many people lose confidence in themselves because they’re overweight. Their attitude about being overweight doesn’t change anything. Instead, they could embrace the fact that they’ve been successful in producing a result called excess fat and that now they’re going to produce a new result called being thin. They would produce this new result by producing new actions. As long as you regard your excess weight as a failure, you’ll be immobilized. However, the minute you change it to a result you produced, therefore one you can change now, then your success is assured.
Belief in failure is a way of poisoning the mind. When we store negative emotions, we affect our physiology, our thinking process, and our mental state. One of the greatest limitations for most people is their fear of failure. Dr. Robert Schuller, who teaches the concept of possibility thinking, asks a great question: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” Think about it. How would you answer that?
If you really believed you could not fail, you might take a whole new set of actions and produce powerful new desirable results. Wouldn’t you be better off trying them? Isn’t that the only way to grow? So start realizing right now that there’s no such thing as failure. There are only results. You always produce a result. If it’s not the one you desire, you can just change your actions and you’ll produce new results. So, delete the word ‘FAILURE’ from your mind and replace it with ‘EXPERIENCE’. You can commit to change your beliefs about failure & learn from every experience. (Article is inspired from ‘Unlimited Power’ by Tony Robbins.)
