You Don’t Need to Get it Right All of the Time

I’m getting ready to launch my first conference.  (You can see details here: www.momgetsabiz.com.) This is unchartered territory for me.

It is scary.  The potential for failure on a micro and macro level is real. 

This week I was speaking with a group of women entrepreneurs about living life from a place of fear versus power and how failure plays into the mix.    One woman spoke what most of us feel inside:

“Sometimes I know what I want to do but I don’t do it because I’m afraid of failing.”

I hear you sister!

Failure is not fun. 

As children raised in the western world, most of us believe failure should be avoided at all costs.   That leaves us perpetually in a state of low-level fear. There is a soundtrack that plays over and over again in our head.

Be good
Be liked
Be successful
Have a nice home
Produce well-mannered kids

That may not sound like fear on first listen but just underneath those mental commands is a whisper that sounds like this:

Be good or else you are a failure
Be liked or else you are a failure
Be successful or else you are a failure

Most of us pursue success simply as a way to avoid failure.  That fear is what makes life feel dull, confusing, suffocating and unsatisfying.

Being willing to fail is the trick to getting personal power back and having a life that feels really good.   It’s often the quickest and most underrated road to success.

If we only pursue success in the places where we cannot fail well then – what fun is that?  The real juice comes from succeeding in the absences of a guarantee.

Here is what I’m learning as I create this conference.  I get a lot of things wrong.  But with each thing I get right the project moves forward at lightening speed.

Failure done with abandon leads to unimaginable success. 

You don’t need to get it right all of the time.   You can fail and still experience success.  You can fail and still come out on top.  In fact, each failure embraced for its gift hands you back a piece of yourself you may have thought you lost along the way.

At least that is what its been doing for me.

What about you?  What would you be doing right now if you weren’t afraid of failing?