Failure is key to success

Drive and determination are necessary to turn one’s dream into reality. Now one asks themselves how can I turn my dreams into reality or rather what is the reason many people fail to achieve their dreams?

The reason so many people do not want to venture out, start their own businesses is because of FEAR of failure.

Fear is what causes some folks to remain in a job which they have had for the past 20 years. These folks know everything they need to know to start their own enterprise but no, no, no these folks will just not budge. Many people waste their time thinking they are too young to start something and when they are on the other side of life; they begin to think they are too old.

Fear is success enemy Number 1. Fear explains why millions of people accomplish very little in life. Fear prevents people from getting what they want from life.

For some it is failing exams, getting divorced, poverty, relocating to a new city or town, losing a job, losing a loved one, getting sick etc.

Worry is nothing more than fear that has been allowed to get out of hand. You can make more space for happiness by getting rid of those things that cause you anxiety. Action feeds and strengthens confidence; inaction in all forms feeds fear – waits, put off, postpone.

Action must precede action. That is the law of nature. Nothing starts itself.

Most fear today is psychological, worry, tension, embarrassment, panic and all stem from mismanaged negative imagination.

Even in the Bible in Joshua, it says one of the most unpleasant of human emotions is fear, that unfamiliar feeling of terror when we face persecution for standing up for what we believe in, when we confront disease and death, when we experience loneliness and loss. It is especially evident in our feelings about the future – whether it is uncertainties of a new day or week or year.

As an antidote of fear, we are urged to be strong and courageous as we face problems and difficulties, and we are to move into the future with confidence. 

Fear is the biggest reason why most people never get past complaining. And ironically, people complain about things they can change. For instance, we do not complain about gravity because there is nothing we can do about it.

Do you know that 99 percent of the things we fear actually never happen?

Think for a second. What could have happened if Bill Gates had let fear take control of him in 1976, when he launched Microsoft Corporation against a huge competitor or rather a market leader in the mold of IBM. It was considered impossible in the eyes of many, how could one imagine a small non-entity such as Microsoft face off an industry goliath such as IBM?

Bill Gates was the world’s richest person ten years running because he conquered his fears and became what he was destined to become.

Can you also imagine what former South African President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela had to go through in his 27 years as a political prisoner at Robben Island. The obstacles that these gentlemen had to overcome would have the majority of us give up.

That is why whenever you see success, that’s a signature of having gone through adversity.

The best known medicine to cure fear is action.

Fear is debilitating. Often we look back and wonder what it is that we were afraid of in the first place.

I am sure you have all heard of a place in the U.S. called The Silicon Valley. This is a place where new ideas and businesses are spawned, there really is nowhere else quite like it; not for the balmy climate, not for the energy, not for the confluence of really bright people, money, advice, marketing and successes that everybody know about.

There is also nowhere like it for failures, but I will come to that in a minute.

The absolute secret to Silicon Valley success is failure. Silicon Valley was not built on the spires of earlier successes but on the rubble of earlier failures……. The companies that grew large and then collapsed in a spectacular way and then a bunch of little start-ups colonized their old offices.

Again and again and again in the Valley, the place works because people there know how to fail.

Never fear that which does not exist,

FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real.

Just do it.