“I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” - Michael Jordan
- For most people, simply getting started on the road to wealth is the hardest part. At least that’s what we tell ourselves right? I like what Felix Dennis says, “Once begun-the job’s half done.” Once begun…so why don’t we begin? In ‘How To Get Rich’ Felix says;
“If young and relatively penniless, many will argue their lack of experience and capital (especially capital!) dooms them to decades of wage slavery. - If slightly better off and on the way up with a halfway decent job and perhaps the probability of further advancement, the problem is often considered to be the loss of what they have already achieved. Plus the lack of capital.
- By the time one is a senior manager or professional, probably with a decent house, a mortgage and children, it is the risk to the security and happiness of the latter (and maybe to a spouse), plus the usual lack of capital, which are most often cited as insuperable difficulties to taking the plunge.”
I had the honor this past March to speak at Yanik Silver’s Underground 5 Seminar and I was very humbled by the amount of people that came up to talk to me about their ideas the rest of that weekend. Many of the ideas were good! Heck, many of the ideas were AWESOME and I wanted to tell them, ‘If you’re not going to implement that I want to!’ But talking to these aspiring entrepreneurs I noticed one thing and I’d be willing to bet money that at least 80% of the people who had these awesome ideas will NEVER do anything about them. Why? Personally I think its lack of confidence in themselves and their abilities. And that leads to fear of failure.
So now we know what it is that holds us back, what can we do about it? Like Felix says, take that first step. Take it on faith and the second step will be easier. Like Michael Jordan says, think of every failure as a stepping stone. Everyone fails…its what you do with that failure that counts.
All the best!
Tim Schmidt
June 26th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Great video from Les Brown. I loved your story about TKD in the email. I took off and on for several years and can attest to the difficulty in improving your flexibilty.
I have been having an interesting debate with some friends about whether it is fear of failure or fear of success. I think for many people they simply don’t start on anything because they fear the unknown. They could succeed or they could fail but they don’t know the result yet and that scares them. Nearly every great success story is built upon previous failures. We train our kids in school that failure is bad and to be avoided at all costs. By the time they graduate they have the “risk” driven out of them.
The lucky ones are encouraged to take chances and fail and realize it is only failure if you quit. The Toilet Paper Entreprenuer recently had a post on http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/blog/i-am-a-failure-the-biggest-lie-out-there Well worth the read.
Failure is not the end. It is simply the beginning. Become an underdog. Fail quickly and succeed even faster.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Tim,
Just found your blog and love it. Keep up the great work.
Great post. One of the great paradoxes in life….very little success has been achieved without some failure along the way. Those who let the fear of failure stand in their way will not see much success. Failure is typically a prerequisite for success.
Neal