If you want to succeed, prepare to fail.

One factor that prevents people from achieving their goals is the fear of making mistakes, something which affects individuals in all areas of life. People become paralysed by fear of making a poor decision, taking a wrong turn, losing a competition, missing a target or just looking bad.

The interesting thing is that successful people tend to ‘fail’ considerably more than other people; they just don’t consider it to be failure. There is a saying in NLP is “There is no failure, only feedback.” Successful people tend to see making mistakes as being an essential factor in their development. As Einstein once said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

If we want to improve our ability to do something it is more useful do develop a learning mindset where the focus is on learning and experimentation rather than trying to maintain a status or to look good. The joy of any performance or task should be in the implementation rather than the result. And if you make a mistake, instead of getting stressed, angry or frustrated, it is much more constructive to accept it and learn from it. Michael Jordan, considered by many to be the best basketball player that ever lived, summed it up wonderfully.

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Andy Barton

Performance Consultant

Wider Vision Ltd