Currently viewing the category: "Dealing with Failure"

The Price of Perfection

By On September 15, 2011 · 7 Comments

The last week has been a lesson to me on the price to be paid when we retreat to the safety of our minds. Any form of success can easily make us forget the reason we took part. I spent the last two weeks not doing what I love, writing, teaching and learning, allowing myself to be controlled by expectations. Having had a few good weeks on myDL I’m struggling to write. Even though the success has been very moderate I’m suddenly finding myself quitting in the middle of posts and shooting down more ideas than ever paying the price for pursuing perfection. It’s not enough to find your passion! you need to find a way to keep it yours too!

Re-connect with your passion

Connect to the original reason you found your passion often. Go back to the reason you started. Whether your passion makes you $1 a year or $100 a day you when you started you started because you connected deeply with it. Connect with that feeling often. Remember all the reasons why you’d gladly do what you’re doing for free. Remember that some time good enough is good enough, the price of perfection is high when you let it stop you producing.

Study how the professionals progressed

Research heroes of your field and look how they progressed. Even the most gifted of gifted athletes and writers knocked their head once or twice. They didn’t start out perfect but they always had passion. No one is born able to do it all. Read about how they did it. Study their mindset. Model their strategies. Use their tactics. Have a good old laugh at the mistakes that they made. When you’re done, have a quick chuckle at your own expense 10 years from now someone will be laughing at how you knocked your head and you won’t care when you’ve made it. Passion will fuel you when you know that you won’t be perfect, but that you’re doing the right things. The price of perfection is less time spent learning.

Change your mindset about failure

Change your mind about failure. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to make plenty. Live with it. This is not permission for you to fail! This is permission to make mistakes. Put together a system and incorporate an element of quality checking before you complete. Systems are often passion killers, use your system to channel your energy to the parts of this blogging lark you’re most passionate about. When I write I now complete my outline, knock out my first draft. I then revise the piece while also checking for glaring spelling and punctuation mistakes then I revise again at least 12 hours later. When I just started out I found I still missed a glut of errors. I should have been checking more until my error margin was acceptable. At the moment I still miss the odd mistake but if I do I fix it and move on I still trust my system. You should do the same set up a system and stick to it as long your success rate is within acceptable limits. The price of perfection is going to be a heart attack if you don’t have  trusted system to handle the areas of your blogging which you struggle most with.

 

 

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Find the Fear and make Big Scary things Happen in your Life

By On July 22, 2011 · 16 Comments

nano_09_blk_participant_120x240

I’ve lost some of that reserve of energy I had. It is just so easy to be over run by the comfort and the routine but I’ve decided to stop. Yeah that’s right I’ve just decided to stop it in it’s tracks. That’s the beauty of it there are far more things in the world that will scare skid marks into your shorts than comfortable things. That’s probably why our minds hang onto those moments of comfort for so long, foregoing new experiences for the allure of unchanging blissful mediocrity.

If you want real and lasting change and deeply fulfilling life you’ve got to put yourself out there! You have to roll up your sleeves. I’ve learnt very little in my years on earth but I have learnt that fear exists only in your mind. Once you start with the doing your body gets involved very quickly catapults you through that layer of fear and excitement adrenaline and instinct take over. We are all survivors. We are all powerful. Thinking drains us of that power. Thinking stops us at the gate makes us doubt, makes us try when we should be doing. It makes us give up before when we’re moments from our goal.

Continue reading »

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Own your Failures, Take action for Magnificent Success

By On July 22, 2011 · 13 Comments

SuccessFailure

Admit your failures, take credit for them, embrace them, and own them. When you willingly take responsibility and ownership even for the failures, you’re positioned for magnificent success.—Ralph Marston

How empowering is that statement? Let’s look at it again.

Admit your failures, take credit for them, embrace them, and own them. When you willingly take responsibility and ownership even for the failures, you’re positioned for magnificent success

That statement is practically overflowing with Action and Passion. All that about failure ? Until we are able to look ourselves in the mirror and own ourselves. Look into our own eyes at our imperfections of body and action and say that’s me. That is me now. Until we can do that we will never be in control of our lives, our time or our wealth.

We’ll continually act ignoring what our reality is. Acting on what we wish to be true.

Continue reading »

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Conquer your Fear of Success

By On July 17, 2011 · 16 Comments

“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the ‘someday I’ll’ philosophy.”

Denis Waitley quotes (American motivational Speaker and Author of self-help books

As old as I am this success thing still confounds me. As hard and as long as I work toward my goals it often feels like I”m using large amounts of my time fighting with myself. There’s just no way to win. Now this is not going to be a scholarly discussion of fear of success. I’m no psychologist I can’t diagnose a phobia and I’m definitely not a wiki.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

All I want to do today is discuss what I know, the frustration caused by the symptoms of fear of success and how to combat it before failure moves into your spare room and starts bonding with your kids. The definition and psychology of the fear of success is pretty simple its fear of change dressed up like an elephant and standing in your living room. No one mentions it but we all know it’s there as we choose over and over to be mediocre.

Supping on the Bananas of disappointment

When we talk about fear of success, the change we fear just happens to be positive. We hairless apes are very clever but we long for routine. Change in any shape size or flavor scares the crap out of us. Until we find the motivation to change, the motivation to succeed we will continue on our negative path supping on bananas of disappointment feasting on meal worms of failure until we finally hit rock bottom or worse still, never hit rock bottom and live our neat lives of quiet desperation living in constant fear of success.

So how do we escape the clutches of this self inflicted mediocrity? Let’s not try let’s do!

Feel the Fear of success, and connect with your Passion

  • Start right now and admit your fear of success and the changes it will bring
  • You’re afraid of that promotion, afraid of losing that extra weight just plain afraid
  • Take a bit of time to understand why you’re afraid of success. The most common fear is that after you solve your biggest problems you cease to have excuses without excuses what ever would you complain about.
  • Connect with your passion when mediocrity comes calling in your life never focus on what you don’t want focus on what you do want let that connection with your passion become the rope that binds you to it and keeps the fear at bay
  • Visualize success and all the benefits that come with it often
  • There is abundance in life open your eyes, focus on your goals and on all the success you see in the world, look at all the ways you are already successful. No one needs to lose for you to win there are infinite opportunities for everyone.
  • Failure isn’t the worst thing on earth

Forget thinking, do!

  • Stop over-thinking, success is good, they say that our ability to reason sets us apart from animals well sometimes we just need to put our brains in neutral and focus on doing.
  • Once you start doing you start learning and that learning is invaluable it also takes your mind off of all those imagined problems success will apparently bring.
  • Success is good go read the definition in the dictionary you fool
  • When you start doing you start learning to flow, to tune out the world stop thinking and take pleasure in the doing. Allowing you to auto-pilot your way to success. Remember what it feels like when you are in flow and are able to produce at a high level for long periods. being able to call on this flow state is the key to lasting change.

Talk your way to success

  • When you’re not doing talk. Talk about what you’ve done talk about what you are still going to do keep the dialog going. Everything is created twice. Talking about what is going on in your head breathes life into your dreams and makes them real to you and your network. Talking makes you accountable for your actions to others and yourself
  • Plan big go ahead and plan every part of your success, every step you plan to take, every meeting every document, hell plan your outfit when you make it. The best way to combat change is  to anticipate it. Plan for success and you’ll find your fear will become trivial.

Start Small but start!

  • Start small see this guest post based on Leo Babauta’s excellent The power of less for tips on how to approach your goals effectively
  • The only failure is failing to try start as small as you feel comfortable with but start now.

As the world barrels along the enemy of great truly is good. We are all of us settling for good when great is within our reach. We need to remember that success lies on the other side of failure if we turn tail and run whenever we fail we’ll never make it. Fear can be the fuel for your success or for the flames of your failure. Only you can decide if good is good enough though.

Technorati Tags: Fear,Procrastination,People,failure,phobia,frustration,definition,disappointment,motivation,Feel,,Connect,life,Visualize,abundance,,symptoms

Windows Live Tags: Fear,Procrastination,People,failure,phobia,frustration,definition,disappointment,motivation,Feel,Passion,Connect,life,Visualize,abundance,goals,symptoms

WordPress Tags: Fear,Procrastination,People,failure,phobia,frustration,definition,disappointment,motivation,Feel,Passion,Connect,life,Visualize,abundance,goals,symptoms

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Failure Quotes – Celebrating my Failures of 2009

By On December 21, 2009 · 17 Comments

Heading into the end of the year I’m tempted to take stock of my failures in 2009 and start waving my finger at myself for all the things I’ve let slip during the year. All the failures punctuating the months from January to now. I’m reminded of all the doe-eyed dreams I had 12 months ago, and all the many goals I set myself at the beginning of the year. All those failures. I can’t help but smile. The year is however come and gone, no matter how long I wag my finger no matter how down I get this is the present I have inherited from myself, failures and all. In many respects 2009 has been, as my footballing friends would say, a rebuilding year for me. I’ve taken stock of myself and realized a number of things that I possibly wasn’t ready to last year or the year before. Where I am, that is where you’ll find me.

I think I’m going to tattoo that on my forehead this new year. I love the fact that I’ve reached a place in my life where my failures no longer define me. I am free of failure let the success roll in.

Famous Failures:

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.” Mahatma Gandhi
  • Einstein was 4 years old before he could speak.
  • Iassc Newton did poorly in grade school and was considered “unpromising.”
  • When Thomas Edison was a youngster, his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. He was counseled to go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.
  • F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21, but his boss would not permit him to wait on customers because he “didn’t have enough sense to close a sale.”
  • Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
  • Bob Cousy suffered the same fate, but he too is a Hall of Famer.
  • A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he “lacked imagination and had no original ideas.”
  • Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade and had to repeat it because he did not complete the tests that were required for promotion.
  • Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times, a major league record.

Failure quotes:

Failure is an event, never a person.  ~William D. Brown, Welcome Stress!

I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.  ~Thomas Edison

Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.  ~Samuel Beckett

One fails forward toward success.  ~Charles F. Kettering

A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.  ~Elmer G. Letterman

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.  ~Elbert Hubbard

There is much to be said for failure.  It is more interesting than success.  ~Max Beerbohm,

Mainly on the Air, 1946

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.  ~Lloyd Jones

If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.  ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Image credit

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Incoming search terms:

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin