Dealing with Failure

Facing the year without a fear of failure

Are you fighting a fear of failure? Out of a fear of failure many people choose not to try, and others, when they encounter failure, choose to retreat. Failure is in fact the path to growth. The pattern tends to be that: we TRY, we then FAIL (in some way), we then LEARN, and we then GROW. If we avoid failure or retreat when we fail then we never gain the benefit of learning and growing.

Failure isn’t even the issue.  The issue is that we judge ourselves to be a failure when we’re not – we can’t be.  The essence of who you are can never be a failure.  You haven’t failed but you have had an idea, a belief, a technique, fail.  You can learn from this and grow in that area.   When you judge yourself to be a failure you divert yourself from growth to shame.

Separate your worth from the behaviour that has failed.  There is no shame there, only growth.