failure | The Caleb Barney Collection

Facing your fears – incrementally vs all at once

The way I see it, there are two ways to successfully face your fears. You can gradually/incrementally introduce yourself to your fears (taking baby steps – learning more about it first, then being around it, then facing it in an unimportant situation, then facing it more regularly) OR you can dive right in and surround yourself with them. The best approach depends on how devastating the outcome could be and what your mindset is.

If there are irreversible repercussions to you failing, then you should take the gradual approach. Read about what you are going to face, talk with other people who have conquered that fear, listen to books/podcasts/YouTube videos, etc. Then just go and be around whatever you have to face. You don’t need to face it yet, but the nearer you are, the more acclimated you’ll get. Start by going once per week then increase the frequency. As you become more familiar with the event, your fear levels will likely go down.

If the stakes are low if you fail/mess up, it’s probably best to just jump right in and learn on the fly. Learning is often done best by experiencing. Then you can still read, listen, talk with others, and watch others to learn more, but now you’ll have a better understanding of what they’re going through (because you’ve already been through a similar situation). You will speed up your learning curve by doing. Just make sure you have a growth mindset going into the event. You may not be good at whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish/conquer yet, but with enough practice you can/will get better.

On winning

Part of winning is not being afraid of losing, of looking dumb, of not being “the best” at something…you have to keep pushing your limits. If you want to continue winning in life, you must always be learning and improving. You may be naturally good at certain things, but if you don’t work to improve your game, everyone around you will catch and surpass you.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Don’t let fear overcome you. Just go out and get to work.

Reaching our potentially by consistently failing

How will we ever know what our limit is until we hit it?

Sometimes you have to fall down to get back up and reach a higher point. Many times you have to fail before you get to success.

If we consistently fail, learn, try again, fail less, learn more, try again, master one subject, try something related but new, fail, learn, and keep repeating the process, we can’t help but to maximize our potential. We will likely never truly maximize what we’re capable of doing, but I think it’s a worthy endeavor to try our best.

Leadership and making mistakes…

Give people permission to make mistakes and the obligation to learn from them.

We all make mistakes – always have and always will. Think back to a time when you were young and impressionable, when you were inexperienced at something…when you wade a mistake, did your teacher/mentor/parent berate you for making a mistake? If they did (and you consistently received this negative feedback), you may still carry some of that baggage with you today. You might be too scared to take any chances at all, for fear of “messing up.” But if you never try anything new because you might make a mistake, you’ll severely limit your growth. You are capable of so much, but you will often have to try and fail many things before building off of those experiences.

If you’re in a position of “power,” whether that’s being an employer, boss, manager, parent, mentor, role model, teacher, coach, etc., make sure you let those around you know that it’s ok to make mistakes! They shouldn’t be happy that they made a mistake and should always try to learn and grow from their mistakes, but despite their best intentions, sometimes they still will slip up. (We all do.)

Make sure you’re creating an environment that knows people have permission to make mistakes, but the obligation to learn from them.

Helicopter and lawnmower parents – STOP! You’re hurting your children!

Life is like a fight. In the beginning, we’re wearing one of those fat sumo suits where if we make a mistake or get knocked on our butt, it won’t hurt much.

As we progress through life, we slowly start increasing in levels of difficulty, risk, and pain. The mistakes we make run the risk of being more consequential to our lives. So after the sumo suit, maybe we are wearing headgear, training gloves, kneepads, etc. And when we get into junior high or high school, maybe we’re just wearing boxing gear. By the time we graduate college, we are now preparing for a world of bareknuckle boxing.

There will always be difficulties in life, but for the parents who try to clear a path and not let their kids ever fall or get hurt, they are actually doing them a disservice. Because when their kids get out into the real world and have to face other bareknuckle boxers, but they haven’t made it past their sumo suit training, they are going to be in a world of pain and not know what to do with it.

We need to build up our pain tolerance (and our children’s pain tolerance) by failing early and failing often. Life is not meant to be all rainbows and butterflies. We’re not only going to have sunny days. We need to encounter the dark days and know that we’ll make it through. It will help us overcome the challenges that inevitably come with living.

Think about that when you’re parenting. It sucks to watch your kid experience any sort of pain, whether that’s physical or emotional. But your job as a parent isn’t to make sure they never experience pain, it’s to make sure that they know how to respond to it and come back stronger.