this is what's stopping you

Let me tell you a little story

There was a boy named Sam.  Sam was extremely creative. He had a lot of ideas, he could paint well, he played the guitar, and he dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.

One day, there was a test at school. 

He didn’t do well at the test. His teacher informed his parents about it. 

He could see his parents were disappointed (note that children are very adept at picking up non verbal cues). They scolded him for it, and revoked his TV privileges.

He was subject of ridicule within his peers because of his academic performance. He felt ashamed.

The experience wasn’t very pleasant for him. Now, he associated not doing well at tests, with the unpleasant experience he had just had.

This association was consistently reinforced his entire school life. Every time he didn’t do well at something, or he failed, there was a negative consequence. 

Then he got into college. Once again, the same theme recurred. The institution, his professors, his peers, his parents, everyone made sure that he got the message loud and clear. 

Failure = Bad. 

And then, Sam entered the real world. With all his dreams and ambitions.

But now, Sam optimised all his decisions to prevent failures as much as possible.

Wherever he saw even the slightest possibility of failing, he turned around and ran in the other direction. 

He didn’t pursue any of his dreams because he feared that he would fail. He was afraid of all the negative implications that failure would bring in his life, including judgement, disappointment and shame. 

Sam had so much potential. But due to his fear of failure, he never did all the things he could have done. 

He never became all the things that he could have become. 

By now, you must have realised that there is no Sam. He’s just a representation of the millions of young lives around the world, that end up the same way. 

Read on if you don’t want yours to be one of them. 

The Fear:

One of the most catastrophic impacts of the modern education system has been the mass instillation of the fear of failure. 

And it has been reinforced by parents and society. 

They have demonised failure to an extent where we are paralysed by the very thought of it.

Since the time we enter school to the day we graduate, we are reminded every second of how big of a sin failure is. 

As a result, all our decisions are optimised to prevent failures as much as possible. 

We don’t go after what we want because what if we fail?

But this has terrible consequences. The reason we don’t realise it is because we can’t really see the consequences until it’s too late. 

It clouds our decision making. It prevents us from taking meaningful risks. And ultimately it disables us from reaching our highest and truest potential. 

It ultimately manifests as regret and bitterness later in life. Because we know deep down, that we let all that potential go to waste. Our dreams and ambition become collateral for the safety we seek. 

But you are young. Here’s what you have to understand.

The fear of failure, like most other fears, is learned. Which means, it can also be unlearned.

The Experiment:

There was a mind boggling experiment done on 7 month old toddlers.

They were put in a room with trained, non venomous snakes, and monitored from a different control room using cameras and screens. Their parents were watching as well. 

And the results were shocking to many. 

The toddlers were very comfortable with the snakes. They touched the snakes like they would touch any of their toys, showing absolutely no signs of fear. 

And this experiment went on to reinforce the already widely held belief, that most fears are learned and not innate. 

We pick them up from cues from our parents and our environment. We pick them up from association.

For example, if you’ve gotten bit by a bee at a young age, and you experience pain, the brain learns to associate the bee with pain. And now suddenly, you’ve developed a fear of bees. 

This is precisely how you pick up the fear of failure over the course of your childhood. It’s developed through association and then reinforced over the course of you lifetime, until it starts to affect everything you do.

And the reason this phenomenon is important to understand is because once you realise that fear is not innate, you can then hopefully work towards eliminating and unlearning it.

Why?

But why should you fail at all?

Most people don’t realise that failure is an inevitable part of growth. 

Failure is not the opposite of success, rather it is a precursor to success. 

When you make a mistake, when you screw up, when you fail, you realise what doesn’t work. And that takes you one step closer to finding what does. 

Look at some of the highest performers across disciplines. Athletes, musicians, entrepreneurs. Audit their lives and you will see that they failed more than they succeeded. 

Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. ‘Harry Potter’ the book, was rejected 12 times by publishers before being excepted. 

I read a very interesting piece a little while back and it went something along these lines…

“Let’s say you knew the exact number of times you had to fail, before you reach your goal. Let’s say you want to be a millionaire, and you know that you need to fail 13 times in order to become a millionaire. How would you look at each failure after knowing this? Would you still be afraid of it, or would you look forward to each one?”

And it completely changed my perspective. And I can personally attest to this.

In my short journey, I have failed many times. More times than I can remember. 

I have failed at businesses, failed at projects, did things that I sucked at, things I was ridiculed for.

And every single time, I have come out of it stronger and wiser. Each time, I have gotten closer to the version of myself, that I strive to become. 

That’s why you need to fail. It brings you closer to your goals, it teaches you what went wrong, it makes you stronger, more resilient. It makes you the person that is more likely to reach your goals. 

Conclusion:

90 percent of you probably didn’t even read it till here. 

90% of the ones that did, will read this and not do anything about it. You will continue to live your life fearing failure, and never really reach your true potential.

Most people only choose to change when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of changing.

And it often takes time for that to happen. And by the time it does happens, it’s too late.

But if you are among the 1% that read it till here, and want to take meaningful action for the better, keep it up. You are going to be among a rare breed, that will live your life passionately and fearlessly, optimising to win rather than ‘not to lose’. 

At any given point, you’re only a few failures away from the life of your dreams. Make sure you don’t let fear get in your way. 

Life is short and regret is poison. Fail more, fail fast. And regardless of the outcome, know that trying counts for more.