The Fear of Success

Failure. What a strange word. Whenever I say or think about the word "failure," its like a cloud comes to rest over my head. I feel defeat. I feel inadequate. I have an acute understanding - because I have felt it in my own life. 

But when I really stop to think, and to listen, I have to ask... is there really such a thing as failure?

What I mean is that if we are learning from our encounters with "failure" then are we ever really failing in the first place? And if what we learn from our initial lack of success propels us toward success, then don't we owe it to ourselves and to our initial "failure" to rejoice over those times when we fall? Shouldn't we come to expect that our initial inability to find the right path will only lead us to the right one?

That is, I should say, only if we let it.

So many people fear failure. We fear the inability of meeting our goals, of not being able to finish what we started and of looking stupid because of it. 

It is in fact our own innate fear of failure and knowing disaster that crushes our opportunity to succeed... to discover that right path... to make a leap in the right direction... to be willing to take a risk and to jump into the unknown...

These are the things that bind us and restrict us from being all that we were created to be. Sometimes we must fall in order to see how not to fall. Sometimes we must be humbled to see the pride that constricts the heart from loving. 

If we really want to experience true life... experience true freedom... then we must not be afraid of "failure." We must not be afraid to try. Or else we will never go anywhere. Instead we will be left in the place where we began, too afraid - and too prideful - to take a risk that could cause complete disaster but could lead to complete success.

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Honda (yes, Honda... I know... kind of strange that I'm posting this) is doing a mini series on The Power of Dreams. Hear what they have to say about failure. Makes you think a little...