Tired of hearing the word ‘failure’

I’ve been dipping in and out of the fear of failure mind set for the last few weeks. Though what I’ve observed is that I am not paralysed with the fear of failure. I know it is to happen and thus I want to fail or that I am ready for the inevitable potential of my first attempt, my first action step to flop.
But maybe I am in denial, and fear of failure is something I am worrying about, because everybody is talking about it.
But I just don’t believe this to be true about me. I don’t like following the trends, I like to think for my self. I don’t simply agree about something that everyone seems to be agreeing on. I ask the questions and answer them myself with full honesty. I know what I believe, think and feel, and it’s not the same as others.
What I am worried is how I am going to react when something flops. I want to make sure that my reaction is beneficial to my business idea. I am still trying to figure out if I need to adjust the approach or the perception of a flop.
But in thinking this, I realised, I want to challenge the “failure” concept that is always mentioned, because I see things differently.
I believe that failure only exists when you don’t start.
That’s it. Simple as that.
I will fail by not doing anything.
But if I start to do something, then I’ve got something to build on.
I know what’s going to happen if I don’t start…nothing.
But what’s funny is that the opposite is true: I don’t know what is going to happen when I start.
So are we linking failure to uncertainty? And if we are, isn’t that completely false?
No matter what the outcome of having started something, you haven’t failed. Imagine scientists thinking like this, they would be paralysed with the fear of failure because each time they did an experiment and the results didn’t come out as they thought, they would throw their arms in the air and say “I failed!” But that isn’t the reality.
We need to stop glamorising failure.
I really dislike the word; it rubs me the wrong way. I disagree how people are using it as a rating system to see whether you are a real entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is a scientist for business. They have a hypothesis (an idea that they believe is to be true, an assumption) and they build it and test it. That is all. Sometimes the tests work as they imagined (but rarely), and most times they don’t turn out how they expected. And like all scientists, they go back and look at everything, the before and after information, see what they are being told through this new data. If their hypothesis was wrong, what have they discovered instead. Or if they didn’t entirely prove their hypothesis, but the data is showing something close, then what changes do they need to make on this.
The idea doesn’t fail; it is simply proved as not the right one. And thus the fail can only come from not doing something about the idea, not testing the idea.
So when you have taken the first step of getting your idea into reality, failure becomes null and void, non-existent, and impossible to be applicable.
What I then realised I need to do, is change my perception of what I am doing. I need to let go of the big picture, the image I envision of how I believe my idea looks like — and instead approach with curiosity and openness of what will happen when…I test it.
This then focuses me to be more interested and curious about outcome and results. This I believe would enable me to pay attention to the delivery, the execution of the idea and the real results that are being shown to me by the real world. I can then embrace the evolution of the idea.
With this perspective and approach, especially when the idea feels huge, I feel better because failure is not possible, as long as I make that step to put it in the real world.
