If you ever noticed, we humans are groomed and conditioned to be ‘winners’ and to avoid ‘failures’ right from the moment we start to notice the world around us after birth.
As a child, we are chided by our parents for ‘failing’ to follow their instructions, or ‘failing’ to do well at school or even ‘failing’ to get along with our siblings.
The event of ‘failure’, in any way, is looked down upon at every step in the society we live in and by the world which presumably judges us for our actions.
The fear of failing starts to get so entrenched and well-positioned in our brain, as we grow up, it consequently prevents us from ‘trying’. We become so consumed by this fear that we dread taking initiatives, just in case we might fail to come up to others’ expectations – in professional or personal relationships.
Now, if fortunately by the time we start to understand the gravity of the stranglehold of this fear, we realise we are half way through our journey and ‘failed’ to make a start on our life.
And then begins the blame-game!
It’s important to understand the feeling or fear of ‘failure’ is just another state of mind, and that ‘failure’ is a relative term, generally defined by certain parameters of our society, which again are only relative and not absolute.
Examples from our history, and even the present, suggest and confirm that success and happiness are reaped by people who have conquered the fear of failure.
Milton Erickson, the world renowned psychiatrist and clinical hypnotherapist, was both dyslexic and colour blind, and severely paralysed at the age of 17 due to polio when the doctors gave him just one night to live.
He was not ready to be defeated by any of those challenges and lived up to be 79, even while helping to transform people’s lives using the powers of unconscious mind. He is also noted for his contributions to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
NLP considers every event in life, including the so-called ‘failures’, as ‘feedback’ – information we can learn from.
A belief in ‘failure’, according to NLP, constricts lack of choices and leads to getting stuck. On the other hand, a belief in ‘feedback’ leads to opening up of new choices and learnings to achieve the desired results. It can work like magic!
So, give this magical method a go the next time you feel you have ‘failed’ in a goal – collate lessons from that event, ponder the feedback and utilise the new perspective to achieve what you desire.
Words Wonder 