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?
Comments
Post a Comment