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“Make your love for learning greater than your fear of failure.”

A thought by John C. Maxwell from his book, Leadershift (p. 52). HarperCollins Leadership. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Love for learning or fear of failure, which to live by? 

John says, “Over the years, I have experienced the fruits of failure. I don’t count my losses; I count the lessons I’ve learned from them. I wrote Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn to help people to learn from their losses. Even failure isn’t failure if you learn something from it. That’s how you can make failure your friend.”

He goes on, “I can remember the day that fear of failure became my friend. It occurred in Los Angeles when I was asked to speak at a conference. Every speaker on the program was more successful, experienced, mature, and recognized than I was. I was less in every way, and I was feeling it. Finally, in the green room, I confided with one of the best speakers.

“‘I don’t feel qualified to be speaking here,’ I told him. I think I was hoping for reassurance. Instead, his reply startled me.

“‘You’re not,’ he said. ‘Speak afraid. Be willing to do it afraid, and eventually you will become qualified.’

“That was a revelation, and it created a leadershift in me. I spoke afraid, did my best, and here is what I discovered: action reduces fear and increases courage. That realization was a major step toward increasing my love for learning and decreasing my fear of failure.”

John goes on, “Don’t allow failure to be a bully in your life. It will, if you let it. Many people get intimidated by failure every day. Instead, you need to make failure your friend. How? Fail early, fail often, and fail forward.

“In this season of my life, my greatest goal is to become a catalyst for the transformation of a nation. I’m spending a significant amount of time in South and Central America trying to add value to people and teach them how to raise one another up. Recently I was asked by a reporter if I thought I would achieve that goal. My answer was, ‘Probably not.’

“The expression on the interviewer’s face indicated surprise. ‘Really?’

“‘Yes. I probably won’t live to see it. But I would rather try something bigger than my capabilities with high odds of failure than attempt something smaller that I know I could achieve.’ The fear of failure is no longer a bully in my life. I’m not afraid of failing as long as I’m stretching and growing.”

Stretching and growing is so much better a way to live than fearing failure, isn’t it? 

Yes, yes

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