“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

One of the main reasons that some people enjoy more success than we do is the fact that they’ve made more mistakes and had more failures than we did. Failing is how we learn. Making mistakes is how we acquire experience. Nothing wrong with mistakes and failures – so long as we learn from them and don’t blame anyone else for what we did.

A man’s true valor is fully displayed in the way that he handles triumphs and failures. The glories of triumphs will be readily passed on to the entourage while the burden and responsibilities of failures will be fully accepted with magnanimity.

Winners play to win but understand that mistakes and failures are part of the process. They don’t enjoy failing anymore than anyone else but they will not allow fear to rules their conduct. They know that failures are not synonymous with defeat. A battle may have been lost but the war can still be won.

For those who have not yet been immunized, failure can have the pernicious effect of generalization that could eventually lead to learned helplessness. That is, a simple failure can be seen as a personal character flaw. It can lead to the belief that the failure was not simply due to errors in judgment but as an evidence of low personal worth.

When that happens the individual is no longer seeing a failure but a failed individual. The failure has been generalized to encompass everything and everyone, including the self, that was involved in the situation. That is when a simple failure takes on a very pernicious dimension.

A very intense fear of failure is called, atychiphobia. Often, this phobia is linked with early life causes, like demeaning parents or siblings, or traumatic events where a major embarrassment was the result of some minor failure. As with any phobia, the best treatment is done by a desensitizing process.

That is, done by facing failures that hold only minor consequences and then moving on to situations where an eventual failure could have larger repercussions. However, since atychiphobia is relatively rare, most cases of fear of failure can be overcome through basic self-improvement techniques destined at improving the self-image.

Finally, a discussion on mistakes and failure would not be complete without including the self-sabotage syndrome. That is situations where people will unconsciously sabotage their own successes. It may be done for many reasons but one of the most prevalent is the lack of self-esteem.

Strange as it may seem, it is possible to feel undeserving of success and to even feel guilty about it. In which case, success may bring so much uneasiness that the person will unconsciously sabotage his success in an effort to regain peace and stability in his emotional life.

Humans have a profound need for consistence. Anything that breaks the status quo is first perceived with apprehension. It has been demonstrated that positive changes in one’s situation can be as stressing as negative occurrences in the person’s life. Hard to believe but true.

The important thing that must be remembered about mistakes and failure is the fact it’s not who we are but something that we did. We made a mistake or had a failure, that’s part of the game of life. Without mistakes or failure there cannot be progress or advancement. So, let’s look at them as learning lessons and not as personal flaws.

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Tags: Personal Development