When it comes to getting what you want, believing in yourself is everything. It was Napoleon Hill who once said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
But let’s face it, dreams aren’t always easy to follow. They can come with disappointments, failure and challenges which make them hard to stick to and follow. However, a positive attitude can have a massive impact on the way we view ourselves and our achievements.
Everyone has a different idea of what they want to achieve or do in life – be it at work, or at home. And everyone has a different idea of how much they’re prepared to risk, or to what extent they’ll take themselves out of their comfort zone to achieve it. There’s a big difference between wanting something and believing that it’s possible.
So how can you push yourself to embrace the possibility of failure?
- Taking yourself out of your comfort zone has been proven to help us thrive. Whilst we might not always achieve what we first set out to achieve, we will learn new things about ourselves in the process; as well as build more resilience, which can help us to cope with new challenges that we might face in everyday life.
- If you want to push those boundaries, use your natural curiosity to explore. When Canon Australia partnered with Dr Maria Kangas of Macquarie University’s Department of Psychology to study the impact of curiosity, they discovered that it affected everything from wellbeing to personal relationships.
- While children are naturally curious, adults get stuck in their ways. By continuing to engage with the curious mindset into adulthood, individuals are likely to seek out unfamiliar experiences and broaden their horizons as a result.
The founder of Honda Motor Company, Soichiro Honda, once said: “Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure”. Quite simply, success is 99% failure.
Make a commitment to yourself now, to do something in the next 24 hours to take you out of your comfort zone. It might be facing a challenging situation head on. It might be signing up to learn a new skill that you’ve long thought about. The more you take yourself out of your comfort zone, the more that you’ll become comfortable with the feeling of discomfort, and the more your self-esteem, confidence and belief in yourself will grow.
Successful failure is a concept we explore in our Building Resilience mindset training. If you are interested in putting on one of our mindset sessions for your organisation, you can find out more here.