Do you find yourself holding back in fear that your business will fail? That you will attempt something new and it won’t succeed? Are you pretending to be busy instead of REALLY building your business? If you don’t give your best and it fails, it will be less painful, right?
What if I told you that failure is essential to your success? In life and business, you WILL make mistakes. You WILL fail. You WILL screw things up. That’s inevitable. You have got to be willing to learn from your failures when they happen. A willingness to be vulnerable, to make mistakes and to fail is crucial to your success.
“Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.” –John Maxwell
Some of the most successful people on the planet have failed tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of times before they created success. Some were even told they would fail and to quit before they even got started.
Tomas Edison was told by his teachers he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He went on to invent the lightbulb, but not before he failed 999 times.
Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job for “lacking imagination and good ideas.”
Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4 or read until he was 7. His teachers called him slow and “mentally handicapped.” He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Should I go on? I think you get the idea.
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” -Michael Jordan
Every failure moves you toward success. See your failure as opportunity for growth, to learn something new, to do it better next time.
If there is one thing I want you to take away from this it is not to fear failure but to embrace it. Challenge yourself to stare failure in the face and say “bring it on failure, you ain’t got nothin’ on me!”
For more tips on breaking through fear of failure, and to build your confidence, get my free gift, 7 Keys to Confidence for Women Entrepreneurs at www.erinsumm.com/confidencegift