Failure

As I have been asking my newest students what is their biggest fear, it amazes me, that so many, an overwhelming majority of them, list failure as their #1 fear. Fear of not succeeding, fear of not passing the course, fear of failing a test, fear of .... as if failure, of any kind, makes them somehow less.

As much as I want to shake them and scream, "life is failure, you'll actually grow from the experience," I do understand. There have been, and are things that kept me trapped where I was, things I never attempted, dreams that remained unfulfilled because of that fear. If I never try, I can at least pretend that someday I might do that. If I try and fail, I will then know that I never will, as if life only ever gives us one shot.

So what is it that is going to happen if we try, give everything we have, and fail? Will our parents disown us? Will our friends ridicule and abandon us? will our heart stop beating, will our dreams turn to dust, will we prove to our children that yes, we are indeed merely human?

Robert Kennedy once said "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly!" Mr. Edison did not fail 1000 times in  inventing the light bulb, he discovered 1000 things that simply did not work. Can you imagine if Columbus turned back because his crew thought they may sail off the edge of the world?

If you live your life in fear of failure, you will find that you never lived at all. You hid your dreams and potential in exchange for the illusion of safety. So do you think any animal caged behind the safety of  bars, is happy, is feeling alive. So why do we keep locking ourselves behind our own imaginary bars?

You want to have fun? Try something amazing, no holding back, and risk failure. Once we accept that failure helps us grow, and that it doesn't make us any weaker, stranger, etc..., we can discover a freedom and zest for life that we had been too scared to even imagine.