This is the second article in the virtual mentoring series and builds on the first article where I talked about the importance of having a vision. This article also could have been called “Don’t be afraid to fail” as often that’s what stops us from having big goals, dreams or visions.
When you are thinking about your vision think big, have an ambitious goal, and shoot for it. Sure, you can set a small, easy to achieve vision but then so what, are you now where you truly want to be? Remember we are talking about our vision. Now to get there we may break it into steps which is fine but that ultimate, big picture end state for whatever aspect we are thinking about should be big and a challenge.
Often this is not comfortable because what if we fail? What if you do fail? So what? We all fail! Through life there are many times we fail but I always think of a great saying “sometimes you win, sometimes you learn” and that’s all a failure is, a lesson of some kind. We fail an exam; well we probably know where we are weak now and that failure can help us focus our studies and so we learned something from that failure. When I learn something really well it’s not because it worked the first time it’s because it DIDN’T work and I struggled, and I researched and eventually worked it out so now I know it well. If I hadn’t failed at first, then I would have nowhere close to my knowledge of that subject. When we train physically such as lifting weights we lift TO FAILURE as it’s only by failing we grow the muscle.
Failing at something is not the same as being a failure. You fail and try again is winning in life. Only if you let something keep you down and giving up is failure. People who know me know I love movies and I love the speech in Rocky Balboa where he talks to his son and I have a poster up in my gym which I think sums up life very well. Life is about being able to take the hits, the failures and keep moving forward, that’s how we win and achieve our vision.
We should give things our best and if we give our best and don’t succeed then we still gave our best and trying something and failing is far better than not trying because we are afraid we might fail.
So we are not afraid of failing on our path to the vision. Really think about what you want, where you want to be and make that your goal.
Never ever thank small!