Many people will procrastinate and not make decisions for fear of getting something wrong. They fear losing money and the loss of self-esteem if they end up being wrong, and as a result they allow opportunities to pass them by. They wrongly believe that by protecting their self-esteem they are protecting themselves, but in reality they are using their self-esteem against themselves because they are preventing themselves from making important decision to improve their lives because of fear of failure. As well as that the small thinking results in no risks being taken. This is often repeated throughout the life of some people and it becomes a habit.
An unexpected result of being afraid of failing and then not taking any risks and ending up doing the very thing that is trying to be avoided, failing – failing to succeed.
When babies learn to walk they will repeatedly trip and stumble and fall, and when they do, they get up and try again and again and again. They don’t think give up because they fell once or a few times, they keep trying until they master walking and eventually running. Most of us have gone through this process and become very proficient at walking.
We are born with only 2 fears – the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. All other fears that people have beyond that are learned. Some people later on in life will become afraid of failing.
Illogically people will think that because they have failed in the past they will fail in the future and therefore they avoid the possibility of a situation that may make this happen. Some people think that they are doomed to fail and they don’t get any luck.
For the baby learning to walk, the human brain learns from failures and adjusts and as the baby gets more successful and it remembers what it needs to do be successful for the future and it forgets about the failures. Over time it remembers its successes and forgets its failures and it repeats the successful actions as a habit. This principal is the same for anything that you do in life.
In order to succeed it is necessary to allow your mind to focus on a goal that you want to achieve and you must forget about past failures. You must not focus on imagining the failures in the past, present or future. Just because you have previous memories of past failures does not mean you should not try again. The past failures and painful and negative experiences should not inhibit what you do in the future, they should contribute to it allowing you to make different decisions in the future to try again in another way.
As long as you focus on what you want to achieve these previous errors, mistakes, failures and humiliations were a necessary part of the learning process. They are means to an end but should never mean the end of trying. Once they have served their purpose they should be forgotten about.
Constantly dwelling on past mistakes and errors from a long time ago or even recently will not help you to achieve your goals. In fact studies have shown that constantly focusing on past failures will perpetuate your failure because you will think that because you failed in the past you will fail in the future.
When you shift your mind-set and stop allowing the past to have grip over you the previous mistakes no longer have you in their grasp and you will start to succeed.
‘You are today where your thoughts have brought you. You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you’ -James Allen
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