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

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour — property, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.

Albert Einstein

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Benjamin Disraeli

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails

Clarence Darrow

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.
Corliss Lamont

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

Dorothy Thompson

Inspired from Mahatma Gandhiji’s Autobiography ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’, I decided to speak nothing but truth for a month and here is my experience.

I was highly inspired by Gandhiji’s autobiography. I didn’t know how the experiment would be, but I said ‘Heck, It would be fun to try it and see how far I can go.” I liked the part where I read it gives you immense power and accelerates your growth. What I was going to experience was something I never imagined.

What I decided to do?

I decide to be 100% honest; I actually mean 100% honesty! It may look easy but it’s not that easy. In this experience I found it very difficult to be completely honest, but somehow I did it. Anything that you honestly feel should be spoken. Any review or any part of your life is asked, you should honestly answer them. It also includes speaking about your most embarrassing movement’s or any truth even about your darkest life experience to be shared openly. Even when it’s asked in front of one or ten’s of people. No exceptions!

My Experience

It was one heck of an experience; my friends actually felt I finally went overboard with this experiment. Here’s how it started. Many of us have the habit of sharing one part of your life with one person and sharing the other part of your life with the other. The first feeling I had was being vulnerable. It’s strange that when we keep a certain piece of information with you or with very closed ones you have a sense of shield with you. It’s a shield which we create to protect us from other people’s judgment. We all have our good and bad deed’s, we also have reasons to justify our actions. Sometime’s it maybe a clear instance of our emotions taking our logic and we do things we don’t want to do. But no matter what, most of them hide to keep the social rep. I started feeling that my shield is going down, I am becoming more open and it’s definitely going to struck hard this time. I felt this experiment is definitely not as easy as I thought. I started being very honest about my opinions, this always lead to questions about my personal life and when I started saying them openly, the shield’s went down and I became open to the critics.

Here’s a small example. I have a belief that there is no such thing as being patriotic. I believe all humans whether they are from my country or not, all are humans. They all are equal. I believe in humanity more than the national border’s. I love my country and very proud of it. But I am proud about humanity as a whole than anything else. I know this belief contrast with many people out there. I was not able to understand, that if our soldier’s kill other soldier’s they are heroes and If other soldier’s kill our soldiers then they are enemies. I agree we need defense forces to protect us from terrorists and many other countries who may try to attack us. My belief is not just about my country but every country in the world. The concept of patriotism and national border’s has in many ways stopped us from being united all across the world. When we say ‘my country is greatest in the world’ we completely ignore the good in other countries. Thanks to the internet and globalization, the world is coming together. Now on the topic, I have friends who are very patriotic. When one of my opinions was asked, I completely pressed my opinion I believed in. Some were open for discussion while some were just ignorant. They told me stories about great heroes who died so we could live a better life. I genuinely agreed with them and salute those great heroes, but my point was about how the whole ‘my country’ & ‘your country’ concept were flawed. There are good and bad people in every country. There were many who didn’t like my view and many who told me they thought the same. I felt connected to those who shared my view and felt completely detached from those who didn’t. I got a feeling of ‘I care a damn’.

There were hundred’s of such controversial talks about personal views, relationships, achievements etc.

The second part of the experiment started here. The sense of being powerful and carefree. When you say things honestly, you polarize people. Some will come near and some go far. Those who you feel connected, the bond gets stronger. The good part about the experiment is that you eliminate most of the social fluff; you become more confident because you’re following nothing but truth. It makes you feel very connected to people. When you’re 100% honest to someone, even they become honest to you about their feelings and opinions. The shield’s go down! This builds great connections. It’s like once we had a class and when the professor explained a difficult calculus problem, the whole class was saying ‘yes, we understood’ after the class I said to a guy, ‘I didn’t understood anything’ and he said ‘Neither, do I. I just said ‘yes’ because everyone did!’ I remember that making connection with people become so easy, like its just 10 minutes you met someone and you start talking about the deepest issues like love, vision, purpose of life etc. Builds strong connections with people on the level of soul. It’s a wonderful experience. The other benefit is criticism; the more people criticize you about your habits or views, the more you think over them and improve. You started growing very fast, because now you cannot hide them, you have to improve or face criticism. The only easy option is growth. It’s a strange feeling like you had one set of parents earlier who teach you what is good and bad but now you have everyone out there giving hundred’s of opinion or offering criticism. If taken positively, it’s accelerated growth experience. It’s amazing how in this process we come face to face with exact fears we are not ready to face. Like say I give an opinion on improving finance, one would ask me where I am on financial level currently. I would answer honestly and it quickly turns my mind on improving my finance. Not to show someone, but for me to understand whether I am on the right path to gain financial abundance.

The best part is you feel complete freedom of thoughts; you don’t have anything to hide, so nothing worries you. The great connections you build and the accelerated growth are amazing.

It was wonderful, but I stopped the experiment. Here’s why?

There is a bad part about the experiment I found. You stop caring about people completely. You are so attached to the principle of truth that you don’t care about opinions of other. You stay open to new ideas and humbly accept your mistake, if there is one. But if you get no justification, you completely discard the person as ignorant or dishonest. The bad part surfaces when you get completely blunt, you may say some truth which hurt others. Say a friend comes to you in a bad mood and say’s he hates his life because his finance is not good. And you bluntly say to him it’s only his laziness and he’s a real looser because he has no motivation in life, or a purpose in life. You may even tell him that he completely emulates his dad and that’s the exact reason he is like that’ Boom! You spoke the truth, but what affect did the statement have on him? If he’s a person who take the statement positively, it’s a wonderful growth opportunity. But this rarely happens because people may either get defensive or depressed depending on their personality. Your statements may completely discourage them. It’s a feeling which takes you away from love. You feel completely disconnected to those who cannot take truth as it is.

The solution is to experiment truth with love. Always speak the truth; you will help the other person. But say it with a genuine attitude of helping the person and not just utter bluntness. Truth can be used for the good or the bad; it depends on how you say it, your intentions and in what conditions.

Just a small example:

A girl asks “Am I fat?”

Truth with bluntness: “You are a pig!”

Truth with love: “You’re a bit overweight, go for gym and read this book on healthy diet.”

Both the statement says the same, but has different intentions and effects.

Humans are not robots, they have feelings and words have deep impact either positively or negatively. This would also make you 99% honest, rather than 100% honest. But it’s a good place.

I finally stopped the experiment in a month, but would definitely try it sometimes with Truth and Love induced!

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Blaise Pascal