How Your Willingness to Fail is the Key to Reaching Success!!

Posted on April 17, 2018 by Megan Arneson, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

People talk about entrepreneurs being fearless risk-takers … dare-devils with unshakeable self-confidence … with an unflagging commitment to disrupting the status quo.

Maybe that’s how it looks on the outside. I dunno about you, but I am NOT fearless. I am scared every single day. Taking the kinds of risks that I do brings about all kinds of irrational thoughts to my brain.

My brain wants to tell me, “No. This is crazy. What are you thinking? Why don’t you just go get a job? It’d be SO much easier!”

When I’m not afraid, I’m extremely uncomfortable. Learning how to do the parts of a business that I used to be able to hand off to accounting, or legal, or sales, or my design team makes me itchy all over. I know I won’t be doing it forever, but I also know that knowing how to do it myself will make me a much more effective business leader and manager later, even if I literally suck at some of these tasks right now. And I fail at them on a regular basis. And luckily, most of the time, no on is around to see me do it. But that’s almost worse sometimes. Because then my monkey brain (who is really only trying to protect me), says: “Hey! No one even saw that. See? You can still get out. Get out now while the gettin’s good!!” It really wants me to quit and go back to something it deems safer.

Now, failing is different than quitting! Let’s be clear on that. A lot of people quit after they fail once or maybe twice. But successful entrepreneurs just keep on failing until they get it right. And it requires daily mind management.

The point is, we’re willing to fail. Then pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and do it again! And again. And again. The example I heard recently from one of my coaches was about a toddler who is learning to walk. What if she pulled herself up and fell down just one time, and then decided: “Nope. That’s it. This is never going to work!”

Ridiculous, right?!? But we do that with stuff like Facebook Ads and emails. Your brain thinks: “No one responded that first time, so this method clearly doesn’t work and I should go do something else.”

Wrong!

No, the keys to being a successful entrepreneur are consistency and perseverance. Just like that toddler … you fall down a couple of times, you get back up and try the same thing again. Maybe after a dozen or two-dozen tries, you take a different approach or angle. Every time you try and fail, you are building new muscles.

So, you must willing to fail. To fall down. Again and again. You have to learn what doesn’t work so that you know clearly what does.

Statistically, it makes total sense. The more times you try, the more times you will fail, and also the more times you will succeed!

If you get lucky the first time, great! Just know that not everything is going to be like that and don’t let it slap you in the face when the next project doesn’t turn out to be as easy.

I question myself every single day, and then I go for it! Sometimes I fall. Sometimes I fall really hard. But I know if I don’t, I’m not growing and learning.

My willingness to fail is dialed up to a 10 right now. Where’s yours?

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Are you feeling overwhelmed as an entrepreneur running a small business? Do you have systems in place that help you automate your most menial tasks? Does the idea of hiring a team intimidate you? Are you interested in learning to build a super solid foundation for your business? Join me for the Business Wellness Roadmap course, where we’ll examine all the critical parts of your business and create a plan for up-leveling them that is actionable and leaves you in the driver’s seat again.