Overcoming Your Fear Of Failure

I remember thinking to myself; he won’t shut up… please… someone shut him up.

Have you ever been in a class and heard the teacher make the same point over and over like a broken record player?

And because you’re a sarcastic prick, hearing that same point repeated over and over made you want to stick peanut butter in your ears and try to take on life as a professional sandwich knowing that the odds were stacked against you in this hungry, hungry world?

Or maybe you’re at home with your Dad, and he’s telling you The Story… you know, the long-winded one that he keeps sharing with you every other day that ends in “Y”?

I’m talking about being annoyed by repetition people, the feeling of frustration from being told the same thing over and over like you’re incapable of remembering.

This feeling is precisely how I feel when I hear people talk about the fear of failure being everyone’s biggest fear.

I am so sick of hearing about the fear of failure because to be honest, I never understood it nor appreciated it until I recently made a discovery that changed my life for the better.

And no, this isn’t a rah rah… you gotta fail to succeed type post… it’s the other side of this expression kept in the dark that I want to illuminate.

But first, an obligatory paragraph or two on failing:

To me, failing is apart of life… you don’t get better sitting on the sidelines, you get better participating in the arena. Obviously when you try something new, you’re going to fail at certain parts of it; you’re unlikely to get world-class results on the first crack. But failing at first isn’t failure… it’s just learning. As long as you don’t quit, you still have a chance to succeed.

The best people at anything at one time were ironically also the biggest failures at that same thing. As the saying goes, the Kung Fu Master is only a Master because he made more mistakes than then apprentice even attempted. Michael Jordan is a winner because he was a loser. If you don’t shoot, you don’t score… all that helium, warms-the-bones, live, laugh, love truths we have come to know and accept. The lesson is this: you have to fail to succeed, you have to crawl to walk. You get it, you got it, good.

Back to the story:

I don’t agree with the “most people have a fear of failure” monologue because I fear something different, something with more impact- something more permanent…

I fear wasting my time.

Yes.. wasting time is what I fear, wasting time is what I always feared because you can’t get it back. Hell, you can fail and try again — I can’t redo time.

The thought of committing my life to something and have it be the wrong thing at times can paralyze me and send me into an ice cream and TV therapy session… yep, that old chestnut.

I’m terrified of chasing the wrong carrot or going down the wrong path because unselfishly, I want what’s best for myself, and maybe if you’re like me, you want what’s best for yourself too. I guess what I really want is time well spent.

So I thought, how do you know if your wasting time? Or rather what is time well spent?

Well, I think I have the answer to my dilemma, and all I needed was a definition for time well spent… so I made one.

Time well spent is simply spending your time doing things that you enjoy, trying to accomplish things you want to achieve, trying to accomplish things that challenge you, or spending time to take care of yourself or your family.

That’s it. It’s so simple.

People shouldn’t fear wasting time… because time is going to pass anyway… as long as you spend your free time enjoying what you do, there is no wrong way to live and you shouldn’t feel the pressure of comparing your life to others. (Granted, hopefully, you don’t enjoy being a giant flaming douche bag whom brings harm to the world)

Stop worrying about being a failure and start focusing on spending time on the activities you enjoy. Life is too short for you not to enjoy it. Have fun, make mistakes, learn from them, and be better. You only get once chance at life, make it count.