40+FAB Blog
I have found that the typical traits one would display to cope with the appearance of anything that looks like failure are excuses, denials and cover-ups. This was quite typical of the ‘grown-ups’ who acted like they never failed when I was a child.
Another key thing that people do when they fail is to philosophise. I love this quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Socrates, “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
Have you ever noticed that failure somehow brings about the philosopher in you? To philosophise is to investigate the truths and principles of knowledge and in its original form in the Greek language it connotes the love of knowledge.
Every failure knowingly or unknowingly is seeking to understand why they failed and then they draw some knowledge from that experience. This let me know that a failure is no fool. For if my failure gets me to reflect on my actions and draw out a philosophy from it, then I have gained something valuable, as opposed to the fool who is unequivocally uninterested in any form of wisdom.
One day I challenged my fear of failure because I thought to myself, “I am mostly afraid of the difficult things that I think I cannot do or have not done, like jumping out of a plane in a sky dive, starting a business, or getting married. But to fail is so easy, common and perhaps inevitable, so why should it fall into the category of things I fear?