Why?
Because what you focus on grows, and the fear of failure you’re harbouring is bigger than anything potentially getting in your way. Failure feels big because you’ve given it that much space in your mind.
Let’s break down those obstacles, sharp corners and impossible ladders to leadership and recognize them for what they are: interesting challenges, new learning curves and wildly juicy opportunities to act.
And while you’re not even used to that idea, I’m going to suggest something even scarier than that.
If a shift in perspective could put you on the journey to willingly taking on fresh challenges, getting a running start on new learning curves and seeing uncertainty as opportunity, what would it look like to actually seek out those things?
Well, you’d be unstoppable.
You’d be living the kind of life and experiencing the level of leadership you’ve always wanted.
I know because I’ve done it.
I was so afraid to fail before I quit my job as an actuary to realize my calling as a coach. Yet, the more time passed, the more I realized what I was sacrificing by staying safe. I had to not only risk failure, but take a good run at it not just once, but over and over again, to get to where I knew I needed to be.
But I survived. I took the hits.
And you know what? I got stronger while my fear of failure weakened.
When I took the debilitating fear of failure out of the equation, I could experience it as a necessary part of growing braver, bolder and better. And isn’t that what I’d always wanted in the first place? Yes! The journey taught me how to welcome and actually want failure so I could grow.
So, the goal here is to drain all the fear out of failure with a new definition – a new way of seeing it – and then wake up to the mountains of growth and experience right in front of your face. I’m telling you, without the lessons, you’re bound to stay stuck.
You won’t grow.
You won’t build.
You won’t win.
You need the experience of wins and losses, of failures and successes to take you to the next level.
Trust me, at every new level you’ll see that the experience is the success and the failure only ever had to do with being too afraid to try.