Make it OK to fail, if you want to succeed

The energy you deploy in resisting failure, is an energy you are depleting from building success.

- Xavier Dagba

If the opening quote of this blog is the only thing you read and integrate, then you got the essence of this article. If it is still confusing for you, then you want to keep reading.

Before we move deeper into this subject, let me clarify the tittle of this blog post. I can already hear some of you thinking that if it is OK to fail, why trying at all? Maybe some of you think that if it is OK to fail then one will not even make the necessary effort to succeed. What I say to that is: if one does not make it OK to fail, one will hardly get back up after the first obstacles, which will end in guaranteed failure.

Back to the topic of this blog. If you have been in the self-help world for a while now, you know that some success coaches prone mindsets like:

• If you want to achieve your goal, success needs to be your only option;

• If you want to reach your goal, it needs to be a life or death priority;

• If you want to succeed, it has to be the only possible outcome.

There is nothing radically wrong with those mindsets. Actually, depending on where you are in your journey, they might be exactly what you need now. They represent a great testimony to the importance of determination, focus and a strong intention; and in my opinion, it is the best way to perceive them.

On the other side, they can cause a bias in your behaviour, which has the potential to hinder greatly your chances to succeed. The bias that I am talking about is fearing and resisting failure.

HOW FEARING AND RESISTING FAILURE WILL HINDER YOUR SUCCESS?

Let us start with one of my favorite quotes from Paolo Coelho;

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

As you know it already, I am more interested by the end of that quote than its beginning. It might not be obvious to you yet but when you fear failure, there is a tremendous amount of energy that you invest in resisting it. That energy might manifest through taking less risks, going slower than you could go or passing on opportunities that could have changed the game for you, just for the sake of playing it safe. When you thing that way, you are doing more bad than good to your goals.

HOW EMBRACING THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE WILL LIBERATE YOU?

Let’s have a real talk for a second here. Failure is part of life, the possibility that it will happen to you on your path to achieve your goals is very real. As we discussed before, resisting it is not the answer. However making peace with it might be the breakthrough that you need. Making peace with failure means knowing that even if you do not achieve your goal, it does not make you less worthy. It means disconnecting your self esteem from your achievements and connecting with the truth that you are good enough, whether your goal gets achieved or not.

Doing this alignment work will liberate all the energy that you invested in resisting failure and will make it available to be used for success.

If this is a path that you decide to take, it is important to remember that any mindset shift requires consistent practice. Your old demons will most likely show up more often than you would like to, just so that you can reaffirm you unwavering desire to change for good. So if the ideas I just shared resonated with you, make sure that you practice them as much as necessary to integrate them.

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Thank you.

- Xavier.