A Launchpad for positive change
In today’s turbulent and increasingly competitive times, the fear of making mistakes can become the biggest obstacle to moving forward in business and life. With all the constant negative stories across the media it’s easy to understand why worry and self-doubt is consuming so many, eroding confidence at a time we need all the confidence we can get to make the right decisions and navigate the troubled waters that may be ahead.
Firstly, we are not born with a fear of failure and making mistakes, it's not an instinct, it's something that grows and develops in all of us as we get older. A fear we learn. In fact, very young children have no fear of failure at all. They have great fun trying new things and learning very fast – through failure and the mistakes they make. Mistakes are simply part of being human.
Understanding and positively embracing the concept of failure can become a Launchpad for positive change. As John Backus, the American computer scientist responsible for the first computer programming language said, “My willingness to fail, gives me the ability to succeed.”
Whether we like it or not, business and life is all about pushing your limits and taking risks - making mistakes should be expected, it’s natural. I am not proposing that you make them on purpose. I'm also not suggesting that amassing multiple mistakes is a good idea either. But if they happen (and they will), they should not simply be shunned and ignored or dwelled on and panicked over. It isn’t so much about avoiding mistakes but rather embracing the idea that they will happen and when they do, being willing to learn from each. It’s not necessarily the mistake that causes us the issue, it’s how we perceive and react to it that can be the real and often long-term problem.
With every mistake, we discover more about our business and ourselves, who we are, our limits, capabilities, what we can and cannot do. The more practice we get at failing, the better equipped we are to deal with it and get the most from it. We also start to understand how to better frame problems and convert setbacks into opportunities.
Yet too many allow the fear of failure to paralyse them, something few of us can afford at this time or any time. How can we expect to develop and learn anything new if we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes? I have seen the fear of failure cripple businesses and paralyse individuals, preventing them from taking any risks at all - which simply works to automatically cut off new opportunities. If you simply play it safe you will have more and more regrets about the things you didn’t do rather than the things you did, ultimately you will regret not having made more mistakes.
The fear of being nothing and achieving nothing should be far more important than the fear of making mistakes. The biggest mistake we make is believing that we should not make mistakes.
