Throwback: Don't be too scared to fail

 

This is a throwback post from 2016 on not being too scared to fail. The willingness to fail helps us make the necessary mistakes on time leading us to learn better ways of doing stuff. We wouldn't learn these ways if we didn't fail at first. Hope you enjoy it:

I remember a friend back where I lived some years ago. He was a good guy and had integrity. His only problem back then was that his English was really terrible. 

Anytime he made a grammatical error whenever he tried to speak English to me and

some other friends, he would be laughed at. His blunders were too glaring to miss. I usually tried hard not to laugh at him, but I found myself occasionally making a faint hint of subdued laughter.

But there was one thing I really loved about this my friend which continues to motivate me till date. He kept on speaking his English, no matter how many times he was laughed at.

He was not concerned about the laughter and 'shame' of speaking wrong English. He didn't give up and say "Okay, my English is destined to be bad, so no need to speak English again."

He didn't decide to keep quiet to avoid being laughed at. He kept on speaking, no matter how incorrect his words seemed to us. We usually corrected him, after laughing at the way he spoke of course. I sometimes had to call him in private to point out to him the correct word structures he could've used.

Guess what? This guy's English started improving with time. He adjusted pretty fast and was quick to take corrections. He never stopped speaking English. He still made few mistakes, but his mistakes became less and less frequent.

Today, you should hear him speak to you in simple, correct and faultless Queens English. Now, no one laughs at him. He became very good at it.

Why was he able to do this? He was not afraid to act, make mistakes and take correction. He was not cowered by the laughter, he was not cowered by his mistakes. He was bold to make mistakes and admit the corrections because he had a winner's mindset.

Sometimes in life, we make mistakes, face challenges, feel ashamed, get depressed and tend to hibernate ourselves to avoid exposing our weakness to the world. This habit does us more harm than good.

It is true that when you back off, you won't make mistakes again, but the FACT remains that you've not improved. You don't grow by that. You just get worse by not mastering these weaknesses and facing them head on.

We must learn not to be afraid of making mistakes or failing at anything. Of course, this doesn't mean we should start making stupid mistakes or not to use our brain. Rather, it means that we must always try to take continuous action in anything that we want to grow in...

Inaction and backing out does not help you. Action and trial does help you. Action can only be consistent once the fear of failure is completely destroyed..

Don't be afraid to fail,

Keep ACTING,

-Nigel