{"id":1945,"date":"2014-06-30T07:53:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T11:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2014-06-30T07:53:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T11:53:16","slug":"if-at-first-you-dont-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/2014\/06\/30\/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed\/","title":{"rendered":"If at first you don’t succeed…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Confession time \u2013 I used to be a cynical teen (surprise, surprise).\u00a0 I believe the\u00a0quote I shared in one of my high school yearbooks was: \u201cIf at\"success-churchill\"<\/a> first you don\u2019t succeed, give up, there\u2019s no sense in making a fool of yourself!\u201d\u00a0 Needless to say, this isn’t the kind of motto I live by today, but it\u2019s a clear indication of the type of mindset that once held me back from pursuing my hopes and dreams. Fear of failure is something that holds a lot of us back from going after the things that we want in life.\u00a0 If there is one thing that I have learned, it\u2019s that not trying is worse than failure.\u00a0 When I’ve tried to do something and it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, of course there was disappointment and sadness at first.\u00a0 Once I\u2019m able to shake that off, it\u2019s about looking at what the failure has taught me.<\/p>\n

Not only are there lessons to learn when we experience failure, but at least we know we gave it a try!\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how many people, myself included, that have not pursued their dreams because of the fear of it leading to disappointment rather than success.\u00a0 What does failure really mean, anyway?\u00a0 Are we failures because there are things that we set out to do that didn’t work out the way we planned?\u00a0 If that\u2019s the case, the world is full of failures, including some of the most accomplished people in the world!<\/p>\n

The reality is that we’ve all experience failure at some point or another in our lives.\u00a0 I’ve found it to be one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had!\u00a0 Failure teaches us that we aren’t in complete control of everything, all the time.\u00a0 There are always going to be things that are out of our control, unknown circumstances or situations that we couldn’t plan for, no matter what.\u00a0 Instead of beating ourselves up about our failures, we should be celebrating the fact that we took a chance and made an effort.\u00a0 Rather than throwing in the towel, we should be looking at how to adjust the plan to achieve the success we want in the future.<\/p>\n

I know I’ve mentioned this in blog posts before, but if you haven\u2019t read the book Think and Grow Rich<\/em>, I highly recommend it.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have the time to read the entire book at the moment (I\u2019m sure you can get the audio book!), then I suggest you focus on the chapter on Persistence<\/em> if you\u2019re struggling with the fear of failure or have experienced it in the pursuit of your goals and are feeling uninspired.\u00a0 The chapter is full of great examples of the magic that happens when we are so committed to achieving our dreams that quitting is not an option.<\/p>\n

If I could change my yearbook quote, I would make it a more optimistic one.\u00a0 Instead of encouraging my colleagues to walk away in the face of failure, I would tell them to persist!\u00a0 \u201cIf at first you don\u2019t succeed, tweak the plan and try again!\u00a0 The rewards waiting for you are worth it!\u201d\u00a0\u2665<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confession time \u2013 I used to be a cynical teen (surprise, surprise).\u00a0 I believe the\u00a0quote I shared in one of my high school yearbooks was: \u201cIf at first you don\u2019t succeed, give up, there\u2019s no sense in making a fool of yourself!\u201d\u00a0 Needless to say, this isn’t the kind of motto I live by today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[596,716,717,718,398,719,289,684],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtoftheday","tag-accomplishment","tag-achieving-success","tag-fear-of-failure","tag-giving-up-not-an-option","tag-napoleon-hill","tag-never-give-up","tag-persistence","tag-think-and-grow-rich"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}