Creators May Fail, But Never Give Up

Do you have fear of failure?

Enough already with all your fears.  You’ve got them, I know you do.  So did I.  I was afraid of failure.  I didn’t ever dare start anything because I would most certainly fail at it. 

If I never started then I’d never fail was the way my insane brain would think about it.  Little did I know that not moving forward was actually making me move in reverse.  Instead of getting closer to the things I wanted in my life I was getting further away with each passing minute.

You want to know what helped me to make a change?  I thought about all the many successful people, creators, who had succeeded at creating great lives in spite of their failures.

Here’s a list:

• Einstein was 4 years old before he could speak.
• Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school and was considered “unpromising.”
• When Thomas Edison was a youngster, his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. He was counseled to go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.
• F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21, but his boss would not permit him to wait on customers because he “didn’t have enough sense to close a sale.”
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
• Bob Cousy suffered the same fate, but he too is a Hall of Famer.
• A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he “lacked imagination and had no original ideas.”
• Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade and had to repeat it because he did not complete the tests that were required for promotion.
• Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times, a major league record.

A person may make mistakes, but is not a failure until he starts letting his failures define him as a failure. We must believe in ourselves, and never give up.

Somewhere along the road of life we will meet someone who sees greatness in us and lets us know it. But even if we don’t meet that some one till many years later we still cannot afford to let ourselves be afraid of trying. 

Don’t give up.  Stick in there until you know for sure you are a success.  Let your failures make you stronger.  Learn from them so that they don’t define you – you define them.