question
There’s a question that floats around in some circles that I personally don’t care for - ‘What would you do if you knew you could not fail?’ Umm, be bored out of my freaking mind after a while. I’ve got one a lot better - ‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ While the answers to these two questions would be very close, the results would be miles apart.
The biggest reason I dislike the first question is learning. As human beings, trial and error is our most natural method of learning. Not always the best, but certainly the most natural. I won’t speak for anyone else, but some of my most important knowledge came disguised as failure. Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.‘ You can argue that mistakes are not failure, but in a way they are, just on a small scale. The difference between a mistake and a failure is whether you keep going or give up. Sometimes keeping going and giving up look the same, you have to look at the timing and the circumstances.
The implication of the first question is clear - we fail because we’re afraid. Fear of failure is one of the biggest fears people have. If you know you can’t fail, you won’t be afraid of failing. But just because you know you can’t fail doesn’t necessarily eliminate that fear. People fear things all the time that have no power over them except what’s in their mind.
Now look at the second question - failure is still an option, but the fear of it is gone. Failure is just an event, but we’re also redefining failure as well. Let’s face it, some people will be more successful at some things than others. Say I decide to go back to college and try to become a nuclear physicist. Honestly, that might be successful in a limited way. I won’t know until I try. Say that I did and I wasn’t able to make it. I could view that as failure, or I could view that as learning I should be doing something else instead. Point is, I wouldn’t be afraid to learn that’s not a good career choice - I would have tried.
It’s not just about eliminating fear though. Many people mistakenly think the opposite of fear is love, or sometimes courage. It’s not. The opposite of fear is confidence. Confidence that you can do something, or at least give it your best, try and learn what you can before moving on to something else.
Confidence goes hand in hand with faith and knowledge. I know when I set my thermostat, either the heater or the air conditioner will turn on and alter the air temperature to that setting. I’m confident of that fact. If you ask me how to write a particular piece of software, I’m reasonably confident I can handle that,I have faith that I can learn the skills necessary for the task if need be. It’s when you ask me to do something unfamiliar that I become less than confident.
Maybe I should rephrase the second question - what would you do if you had the confidence to do it?