The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Ashley Montagu

Just look in you and others, what you see? Amazing potential to shine; beyond the limits. Amazing talent and creativity in at least one part of their life. Each one of us has the potential of our mind and gifted creativity to achieve what we want in life. Everyone is capable of achieving any goal in life.

Just go through the biographies of the greatest people of the century and you’ll find they achieved greatness in the worst circumstances. Albert Einstein – a dyslexic (Defected reading and writing skills) became one of the greatest scientists to develop nuclear science. Steven Spielberg got rejected from every film making school he applied because of his academic weakness. Bill Gates started his very first company called ‘Traf – o – data’ and it bombed with bankruptcy. Then, he joined Harvard to drop out and create ‘Microsoft’.

There are countless such examples. Do you see a pattern above? Why they had the success even after great disability or failures in their life? If we talk about financial success, there are 6.76 billion people on earth and yet only 1% population of earth earns around 96% of world’s wealth.

Success is definitely a relative term, the meaning of success may be different as per individual goals, but its core definition of achieving what you want is same for all. When we are born, there is no experience or beliefs about life. We learn or understand life by what we learn from our surroundings. What are the things understood by successful people and not by the rest. The biggest reason is taking the risk of leaving the notion of security to achieve goals that matter. Of course, improving the success rate can also be done, but in these post let us concentrate on the concept of trying irrespective of failures.

Let me share a story first, it’s quite popular. There was once a small baby elephant captured by the circus staff and brought to the city circus. The baby elephant was tied to a pole. The daily routine of the elephant include training of various circus acts which were later performed by the elephant in live circus shows. Years went by and now the elephant was completely grown. The elephant was one of the strongest. Once a mirror was brought in front of the elephant, the elephant saw himself for the very first time. He saw he has grown big and strong. Till now, he had no idea of his potential. He applied all his strength and broke the pole. The pole was strong enough to hold the baby elephant, but not strong enough to hold this strong elephant. The elephant escaped and went to the jungle. 

Many of us are like the elephant. We have no idea of the potential in us. All we need now is to look inside us and understand the power given to us. The elephant didn’t understand his own strength for so many years, because he had long ‘given up’ on his own power. If you’re not doing what you love, you have given up your power. Many have so strong fear of failure that they never try to pursue the big goals in life. Fear of failure paralyses people in pursuit of their dreams and goals. Say you want to start your own business, you have so many fears. What if I fail? What if I go bankrupt? What if I am not able to maintain my current lifestyle? All these questions come from the fear of failure.

Let’s understand why fear of failure exists?

Failure is a state when you don’t get what you expected. You’re unable to meet your desires. When a goal is made and efforts are made to achieve the goals, lots of investment of time, money, resource etc goes into it. If there is an undesirable outcome, we label it ‘Failure’.

The fear of failure is so strong that people forget the passion of success. The fear of failure makes people reactive, rather a proactive person who can make his own goals and achieve them. People start leaving for security of life, which never exist anyway. No matter how much money you earn, or how many relationships you make, you have to leave everything in the end anyway. Life should be more fun and wild, then to be a collector. A quick and simple way to understand this is analyze any normal person in sixties. Did they achieve any considerable in life? Did they pursue their most adventurous goals of life, because they were too scared to leave their dead job? They were so much after security that they forgot what it is to be free. Many would blame there family or lack of resources, but these are nothing more than just excuses. If you want something badly enough, no problem could ever stop you from achieving your goal. Now do you want to be there when you get in your sixties? Just visualize where your current actions would lead you? Where you’ll be after 20 years, if you maintained your current life path and goals? Do you see something missing? You might have some promotions or probably a good car and house, but is that all you want? If you’re happy with what you see, continue on the path. But if you don’t see yourself where you want to be, probably you need to change your path now. You should be making your most amazing goals and pursuing them. If you don’t have the knowledge, get it! If you don’t have the resource, acquire it! These may bring the fear of failure, tackle it!

The major reasons of fear of failure are:-

1. Regret of expectations, not met.

2. Regret of investment made. (It could be any resource as time, money, energy, focus, etc)

3. Social outcast

4. Pain of ‘failure’ itself

Let’s see if there is an element of truth in any of the above.

If you’re expectation are not met, it simply means your calculation to achieve your goal was wrong. It’s just a learning experience to make you sharper and more powerful to achieve your goal. Your investment was not lost; it gave you an experience about where you were wrong. And this is exactly the stuff which will help you achieve the goals next time. Just learn the lessons and enjoy the experience

Social outcast is actually no problem at all. But for many it becomes a matter of death and life. Say you go to achieve a goal and fail miserably, so what? It’s better to be the one playing on the field with passion and energy and even failing miserably, then be the poor souls who just sit on stands and clap. Either you win or lose, people are going to talk. Why loose your potential? You’ll be surprised how amazingly people connect to authentic behavior. Many people would have their own fear, which they impose when you try something courageous. You help them see that there life is not what they want. You help them leave those fear based thinking. You inspire them! What’s the fun if you don’t get bruised now and then? You might face the pain of failure, but it’s something you can bear. Going after the goals you love would make you burn with energy and gusto. It makes you live with passion. The fun is just amazing.

Live the life like a daring adventure. Don’t be a domestic animal conditioned by the social conditioning. Be the wild. Be the free soul. Live with courage to face every challenge of life. Be ready to take intelligent risk and take the gamble of life. Enjoy life to full! Take the plunge

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Winston Churchill

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours”

Swedish Proverb

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

Herm Albright

Thoughts flow in our mind all the time. There are thousands or lacks of thoughts generating in your mind everyday. Positive thoughts are the type of thoughts which give you happiness. Having positive thoughts enable you to overcome all the fears and take action to pursue your goals. Obviously, it creates an enriching life of fulfillment.

So how do we generate a positive mindset? that is we make sure positive thoughts flow in your mind. Seeking opportunities and achieve them with positivity.

There are two steps to be followed.

1. Resolving Negative thoughts:

Say a negative thought comes to your mind, probably a fear based thought. Fear is a wonderful marking scheme; it would show you exactly the parts of your life you need to grow. You probably made a goal and now don’t know whether it would be possible to achieve it. Try to be more aware, see where the fear takes you. Try to find the truth in those fears. Ask question like “Why I have this fear?” “Is it because there is a flaw in my plans?” “Is it because I think I don’t have the capabilities to follow my plans and achieve this goal?” Write them on a paper and answer them! Create solutions for it, like if my plans are flawed, how I can make them more perfect. If I don’t have the capabilities, then train myself with more knowledge or get a mentor to teach me. Should I make a smaller goal and try to achieve it first? Make your plan with all the details you need. You’ll see that most of your fear evaporates and generate a positive feeling within you.

But what about those imaginary fears which generate negative thoughts? That’s where the step 2 comes in.

2. Generating positive thoughts:

Most of us have imaginary fears which become an obstacle in achieving our goals. Say you’re planning to give a speech and you fear it soooo much, just because of those imaginary fears. Like What If I forgot my lines, what If I slipped on stage or probably what If there is a wardrobe malfunction?

These fears have no truth in them. But they exist only because of our social conditioning or past experiences or worse, analyzing the experience of others who failed.

This could be tackled by generating confidence and positivity from within.

Let me give you a personal example. There was a festival in my college. There were auditions for anchoring (Hosting) the show. I really wanted to get selected for hosting. I had no experience of anchoring a show, I did give speeches and presentation in schools, but they were highly formal and structured. The anchoring I was supposed to do for “War of Dj’s” Event was most of spontantaneous. My first struggle was to get selected for anchoring. There were around 35-40 participants and only 6 were going to be selected. To make things worse, they wanted to choose 3 guys and there were around 25 guys in participants. My success ratio was 3/25. Further, they brought around 100 seniors from our college as a demo audience and all instructed to create trouble for anchors during auditions. Myself and one of my friend went in for auditions. The audience were real trouble makers. After seeing them my friend decided to quit without even appearing for it. I was adamant about going for selections, no matter what. But I had my fears too. There were many participants who were very qualified then me with their past experiences in anchoring. I decided to go for it. They gave us a few quotes and told us to prepare an intro for the event based on the quotes. After receiving the quotes I went out of the audition hall, created my intro speech. It was not much difficult for me. The difficult part was to delivering it with gusto and confidence. I went to my group of friends and made them my small audience in the front lobby of my college. It’s a place where many students and professors come and go. I had around 30 minutes to train myself and I knew the place would be perfect too. I started my speech. The first time, I said it with lots of mistakes. I learned again perfectly and delivered again. It was good, but there was no passion. I tossed my speech and decide to Do it my way! This time I came in my natural state and delivered the speech, but not word to word. I simply started enjoying the flow. The constant feedback from my friends helped me. Many people in the lobby stopped to hear my intro speech and gave me some guidance. There was also one professor who gave me some guidelines like not to pull the letter ’s’ and make my speech more clear. It’s strange sometime how strangers come to help you, if you have the desire to learn. By the end of 30 minutes I had enough confidence to go for it. I was feeling very confident. I went to the audition hall, waiting for my turn. OOps! The crowd there was really troublesome for the participant anchors. During the audition they would sing so unrelated random songs to disturb the participants (For those who know, the song they sang was “chaddi pehen ke phul khila hai”) Duh! One of the girl actually cried and left the stage. That’s where my confidence stumbled. I started having those Imaginary fears. Can I do it? Would I make it? How should I tackle that audience? I had to tackle these feelings and thoughts anyhow. I started programming my mind. I remembered how many times as a child I had fear of ghosts and then my mom use to say those were imaginary, to trust the one above us all. He would protect us. To trust, that she would love me unconditionally, no matter what. I convinced myself that all these fears were just imaginary. I tackled it with imagination! I could actually see angels cheering me I saw all my friends cheering me by Imagination, as they were not allowed in audition hall. I saw my mom repeating words like “I know, you can do it”. I saw my school teachers saying me “Dhaval, with hard work and persistence, you can achieve anything you set your mind too”. I started feeling the energy of the audition hall; I started emitting the positivity (I’ll write a post later on how to get these feeling). My turn came and I went to the stage. I make my face amazingly, so people never know what’s going on my mind. Though my legs were shaking. The first thing I did after going to stage was to give a BIG smile to everyone. I actually felt like giving ‘love’ energy to all out there. Giving a long smile made me highly confident. It made me feel connected to them. I was enjoying the attention of hundred’s on me. It was awesome! The feeling of passion took over and I started the intro. I engaged the crowd during the speech in shouts of Hip! Hip! Said by me and Hurray! By the audience. This was not planned but I think I did it to make the crowd forget about singing songs and getting them engaged with me. It worked! I gave my speech with so much passion that when I finished I was surprised myself about how I pulled it off! The crowd cheering all the way. It was like someone just took over me while I was on the stage. The experience was amazing. I got selected. The next time I did during the event was easy as I already had the experience.

Listening inspiring songs and reading inspiring stuff always help during these situations. Before your big task, I would suggest to go for Neuro Linguistic Programming. I had this habit from childhood, but didn’t know what it was called. A part of it is where you listen to your favorite song, close your eyes and visualize yourself making that big speech successfully! See you smiling and enjoying the task. You could also do it for long term goals, by visualizing you achieved your goal.

Some Tips for making your day positive:

1. Eat healthy! Your Diet plays a large role in your energy levels.

2. Keep a gratitude diary where you daily express your gratitude for the wonderful things you have.

3. Neuro Linguistic programming

4. Keeping a gratitude stone also works for some. You keep a small roundish stone in your pocket. And rub it whenever you want to feel positive. It’s not logical, but you’ll be surprised by the amazing feeling you get everytime you rub that stone. Your secret source of inspiration

5. Read positive stuff and try to avoid the daily negativity of newspapers.

6. Smile at people! Even strangers sometime. I am not talking of smiling only at beautiful girls

7. Use your positive imagination!

You can use any method of above, see what works best for you and go for it!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

Share your Inspiring stories, you might make someone’s day!