Several years ago I used to write a series of e-mails called Escape Velocity Pep-Talks that I used to send out to my readers on a weekly basis. They were extremely popular and my list of subscribers was growing on a daily basis. I had several months worth of pep-talks written and several thousand subscribers when I received an e-mail from my service provider informing me that their server had crashed and lost all of my data. I immediately picked up the phone to confirm the bad news and needless to say I was pretty bummed.
Recently, while going through my old e-mail account, I found a copy of most of my Escape Velocity Pep-Talks sitting in an old archived folder. I read them all with a bit of nostalgia and realized that I had written some pretty good stuff that wasn’t getting read anymore.
I’ve been thinking about hosting my own blog for a while now and with the recent discovery of my pep-talks I thought this would be the perfect time and place to re-release them. So, over the next days, weeks, and months I will be publishing these pep-talks, newsletters, free content, and more on this blog. I hope you enjoy them as so many others have.
Here is Escape Velocity Pep-Talk #1… it’s a great place to start. I hope you’ll leave me a comment below when you’re done reading. Enjoy!
Escape Velocity Pep-Talk #1
Over the last several weeks I’ve been taking a survey on a new page of my website asking visitors to pick which topic is MOST important to them.
And, out of 8 possible choices, the “fear of failure” has 40 percent of the votes so far.
With this feedback in mind, I decided to dedicate this week’s newsletter to “overcoming” the fear of failure.
To start, I’ll use my all-time favorite quote on failure:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
I love this quote because it clearly shows that Thomas Edison, the inventor of the incandescent light bulb, “perceived” failure in an unusual and successful way.
All of his friends and supporters were getting impatient with him… they thought he was going mad and wasting all their money.
This, however, did not stop Mr. Edison from continuing his experiments and eventually succeeding.
Think about this… if Mr. Edison DIDN’T fail over 10,000 times before he discovered how to sustain light in a glass bulb, life as we know it now would be different.
In otherwords, if he didn’t have the guts, courage, or “balls” to keep trying new things over and over and over or if he “gave up” on failed attempt number 9,593, you may not be reading this e-mail on your computer screen right now.
Who knows, maybe computers wouldn’t have even been invented yet?
Because he “refused” to “perceive” failure as permanent defeat and loss, and to instead “see” failure as just one step closer to eventual success, Mr. Edison not only changed his life… he changed the world!
And, it was because of the WAY HE THOUGHT about failure.
And, that’s what I want to stress in this newsletter and it’s a HUGE topic of discussion in my e-book…
that in order to OVERCOME fear, you must “perceive” it differently.
You must view it as “necessary” to reach your goals.
In my philosophy, I take it one step further…
instead of just “seeing” it differently, start to “expect” it.
Know that we are human and make mistakes. Know that failure will happen from time to time. It’s inevitable! Nobody’s perfect. Instead of seeing failure as a permanent “state”, learn the lessons it’s trying to teach you and move on.
And, a major concept of my Think & Grow Balls! philosophy is that MOST of the time (if not ALL the time) we don’t have all the “information” we need to succeed during the first attempt.
We need the “experience” to KNOW that certain methods won’t work. We must know this so we can ADAPT and try something different that MIGHT work.
And, we must keep trying until a new method DOES work.
To put it another way, you’ll learn what you need to learn ALONG THE WAY!
But, you must take that first step.
Remember, even the longest journeys begin with a single step.
And, as you’re beginning your journey, think of this quote from Napoleon Hill:
“Ultimately, nothing much matters very much. The defeat that seems to break your heart today will be but a ripple among the waves of other experiences in the ocean of your life further ahead.”
So, in conclusion, failure is a necessary step towards success and the only thing that matters is how YOU perceive it and if YOU will let it deter you from making another attempt.
Failure can hurt sometimes and it can even be pretty embarrassing at other times… but so what?
At least you have the courage and “balls” to make the attempts that few people ever will.
Just remember that if you fail enough, you will eventually succeed! Most every person who changed the world in some way was thought to be “mad” at some point in their lives because they NEVER gave up… even when logical reasoning said they SHOULD have. But, because they followed their own path and listened to the beat of their own drummer, they made the world a better place!
I sincerely hope I can reduce your fear and encourage you to make the happiest life possible for yourself.
Onward & Upward,
