Conquer Your Fear of Failure

The first time you tried to walk, you fell down. Let me ask you something...Are you now afraid of walking?

You've already failed many times, although you may not remember. And that's mainly because you've already conquered your fear of failure in those areas.

The next time you feel like quitting, remember this story:

At age 22 he failed in business; at age 23 he ran for state legislature and lost; at age 24 he failed in business again; at age 26 his sweatheart died and he was broken-hearted; at age 27 he had a nervous breakdown; at age 34 he ran for Congress and lost; at age 39 he ran for Congress again, and lost again; at age 46 he ran for Senate and lost; at age 47 his ticket lost when he ran for Vice President; at age 49 he ran for Senate again, and lost again; at age 51 he ran and was elected as the President of the United States.

His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Make up your mind that if you try anything worthwhile, you will fail at it first.

Learn something, and try again.

Every baseball fan knows that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, but they probably won't be able to tell you that he struck out 1,330 times.

R.H. Macy failed in seven different business endeavors before his store in New York caught on.

English novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published his 564 books

Jonas Salk worked for fifteen years before he found the vaccine for polio. That was FIFTEEN YEARS of CONTINUOUS FAILURE for ONE SUCCESS! But look at the benefit to mankind.

I suggest we revise one old adage to: "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly."

Anything you can do well the first time you try it is too simple to be of any consequence.

Several years ago, Columbia University was revising a part of the curriculum for their graduate business school and asked dozens of successful businessmen what the most important ingredient for success was.

The answer wasn't charisma, education, money, salesmanship,or leadership qualities.

It was persistence.

You don't learn much when you're successful, but you certainly learn when you do something wrong. Learn to lookat your failures as learning experiences and you'll begin to almost look foreward to failing (almost).

Success and failure have the same root - the desire to achieve - but avoiding failure is not the same as achieving success.

Failure is determined by what you allow to happen, success by what you make happen.

It is extremely important to emphasize the concept of failure as a positive experience in your life. The only time failure becomes negative is when you stop the effort after the failure.

When you give up.

There's only one thing worse - not trying in the first place.

So don't worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.