By farconville, published on 22 June 2012
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Yesterday, I was watching TV when an interview came on, it was an old Lebron James interview. Something he said grabbed my attention. He said “you cannot succeed in life until your stop being afraid to fail”.

What LeBron said grabbed my attention for several reasons. During the last few weeks, I have worked with the Club Commit Crew on how to handle fear, and how to deal with limitations. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to think about failure, and why the idea of failing is so scary. Fear can be paralyzing, and it CAN and WILL stop you in your tracks if you let it. The idea of getting comfortable with fear and failure is a crazy thought, but boy was LeBron on to something. You will not accomplish anything of significance in this world if you are not willing to come to grips with the reality that you could FAIL. The most empowering thought is not dealing with the reality that you might fail. The most powerful part is realizing that when you fail, you can always start again.

Failure is a springboard. It is your opportunity to try something and learn from the experience. Without failure both ours, and others we would actually learn nothing. It is our failures that have the power to teach us something that we can actually process and then come back to the table. When the actual vehicle we use to learn how to do things better is removed all we have is a bunch of untested theories and ideas. By themselves, those ideas and theories don’t leave us with much material to work with, and they leave us with very little if any opportunity for growth. Failure is our biggest teacher. It teaches us what doesn’t work, and it teaches us to try again, a different way. Failure does not have the ability to kill you, it can only slow you down a bit, or it may come with a bit of embarrassing, but so what! Have you ever watched a child learn? When a child is trying to accomplish something they operate without fear, instead of thinking about what could go wrong they focus on all of the things that could go right. Kids do some crazy things. They walking on things, that were not meant to hold their little bodies. They will start dance in the middle of a room and won’t care if people are staring at them. They don’t worry about anything, and they don’t let a thing hold them back from what they believe is possible. You and I, on the other hand, are ALWAYS thinking about all of the things that could happen. Our fears stay from and center and thy often stop us from finding out what is really possible.

Today I am encouraging you to start liking failure. Be willing to take charge of the opportunities that it gives you, and get accustom to restarting and trying over. You have the ability to bring your ideas and dreams to life, but that will only happen when you are willing to face your fears and get comfortable with failing. If you find that fear is stopping you from moving forward, FACE IT, and take away it’s power. You are a giant, stop acting like an ant!