Kev Kennedy's Blog

Freedom to try

“What would you do if you knew that it was impossible for you to fail?”

That’s an intriguing question I heard a motivational speaker ask last year. I don’t normally go a bundle on motivational speakers; the natural born cynic in me thinks ‘Well, if you’re so successful, why aren’t you off buying yachts instead of talking to us?’

But the point of that question – that actually we are normally hampered by our own fear of failure than anything else – has been coming home to me of late. There are several things I’ve put ‘on hold’, or not pursued because I’ve had doubts over whether I could succeed at them. What I needed to know was that I was ‘free to try’ – free to have a go and see what happened.

Yes, there are limitations on all of us, and no guarantee of success. But as I get older I’ve begun to realise that actually ‘success’ is never achieved without risks. And if you never take the risk, the failure rate will be 100%. And the truth is, nobody will think bad of you if you give it a go and don’t succeed. But if you never give it a go, they may never think much of you at all.

Sometimes not trying is our greatest failure.
 

Created on Mon 30th November 2009 15:23