“I hate to fail. I avoid failure at all costs. I won’t swing out and promise that- it will set me up to fail. I never fail. I don’t want to lose. I am such a failure. What is wrong with me- I am a loser.”

Familiar? In all my years of coaching thousands of people, this is one of the most common complaints or concerns I have heard.You hate to fail. Why?

You equate failing with you. Like there is something wrong with YOU that you failed. It must mean something about you, personally. Like you have some personal flaw. Or that you will never succeed or that you will not get what you want in life or be who you want to be.

What if none of that was true?

Consider that failing is simply a stepping stone. All failing is really is you did not get what you wanted in that moment of time. Really. If you examine it, that is all that happened. You set out to accomplish something or gain something or sell something and you did not achieve what you set out to get. That is all. And really, you are not a 3 year old– you don’t need to throw a tantrum!

No, I don’t do that, you might retort!

You may not throw yourself on the ground, kick your feet, scream and cry or pout but you are throwing a tantrum if you get upset, talk about it incessantly, analyze it to death, and then refuse make big promises and be willing to risk failure again. That is simply a sophisticated (or not so sophisticated) version of a 3 year old’s tantrum.

Cut it out. You cannot succeed and cannot experience the thrill of victory without embracing failure. Being an entrepreneur is like being on a  wild ride- you will fail some, but you will never finish the ride unless you are willing to enjoy it all!

Fail fast, fail big, fail often- so what! Embrace it, learn what you can from the why of the failure and move on!  Success is only a moment away…..