S2.E43: Overcoming Fear of Failure
Remember how Thomas Edison fearlessly danced with failure 1000+ times before he waltzed with the electric brilliance of the light bulb? And who could forget Colonel Sanders, serving up resilience with his secret chicken recipe, despite a chorus of "nos"?
We're spilling the secrets of why failing isn't falling – it's the Universe's way of nudging us closer to our wildest dreams. Get ready to embrace the stumbles, fumbles, and belly flops on your path to greatness.
In this episode, we're serving up a scrumptious action item: Let's face it, the critics who've never dared to chase their dreams might not be the best DJs for your destiny's dance floor.
So get cozy as we unravel the tales of persistence. Your dreams are waiting for you to leap fearlessly into the arena of possibilities!
Hi there. I'm your host, Kayla Rain, and welcome back to Attracted with ease. This week I wanna talk to you about failure. I have really had a difficult week and I don't know that I could say that I feel like a failure because of the week that I've had, but I definitely haven't been feeling like myself. I've been stressed, I've been burned out.
I've felt taken advantage of and to be quite honest, I haven't really been in the right mindset to record something motivational and inspirational. But today on my lunch, I was reading a book and as I was reading, there was a section of the book that talked about Overcoming your fears. And one of the issues that they addressed in this book was fear of failure. And as I was reading today, the messages from this book just really hit home for me and I thought to myself, that's what I need to talk about.
And again, not so much because I'm feeling like a huge failure right now, but because everything that I was reading was really resonating with me and it was making me feel like, you know what? Everything's gonna be okay. and I wanted to share with you today some of the thoughts and concepts that I was reading, but also some of the areas that my mind went to as I was reading these thoughts and comments. So that's what today's topic is on is Overcoming Fear of Failure.
But before I get into all of that, I wanna start this episode out by talking about my gratitude. So the first thing that I'm grateful for this week is that I not only have a vacation coming up, but I have a family reunion to attend. My family does a family reunion once a year, and it's literally my parents and my siblings and any of their children all gathering together for one weekend. And it's something that I absolutely look forward to.
I count down the months until the family reunion, and part of that is that I don't live super close to my family. So there are some years that the family reunion is the only time I get to see my family, but I cannot tell you how much I just need a break and how much I am looking forward to time away. And to know that during that time away I get to actually see my sisters, see my brother, throw my arms around my most loved people in my life, and my husband gets to come with me.
Like I cannot tell you how excited I am to have this family reunion coming up, And. that is something I am so grateful for this week. The next thing on my list is I'm grateful for opportunities to learn. and I have said this a few different times on a few different podcast episodes, but I go through periods of time where I'm really good about reading and other times where I just don't read anything except maybe my junk mail. But I've gotten back into the habit of reading recently and I'm just reading a book that I'm absolutely obsessed with every free minute that I have on my lunch break as I'm going to bed sometimes when I just get home, I'm literally sitting reading this book and I'm almost done with it.
But I just have to say that I love, love, love that there are opportunities throughout our life for us to continue to learn and grow and develop skills. And you know, maybe I'm crazy because I don't really read novels. I tend to read self-help books when I do read, but oh my gosh, I'm getting so much out of the book that I'm reading and I'm just so grateful that those resources are available to us, And, that we never truly stop learning.
The third thing that I'm grateful for this week is what I would call courageous leadership. Now, I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I am known in my job for having courageous leadership. And a lot of people would say, oh, so that means you're a little bit of a bratt. What I mean by that is, in my job we use the phrase courageous leadership as someone who is willing to stand up for what they believe in.
Someone that is willing to challenge upwards if necessary, someone who is just going to be courageous in the way that they communicate and truly use their courageous leadership to express when they feel like something isn't right or isn't fair or needs to change. and I have to say, I'm really grateful that that is a strength of mine because I know that so many people have a difficult time with confrontation and have a difficult time standing up for themselves.
And like I said, I have had a challenging week, like a stressful crazy week, and I really was feeling taken advantage of. And today I went into work and literally used my courageous leadership to sit down with someone I work with and just lay it all out on the line and say, here is what you are doing or not doing. That's frustrating me. Now those conversations can go a number of ways because not everybody is open to receiving constructive feedback.
But I'm grateful that my conversation went well. I think it was well received. I think that we kind of had a breakthrough, this other person and I, I think our working relationship will be better because of it. and I feel a weight lifted off of me just literally having had that conversation with this person and So I am grateful for my ability to address things that I feel are unfair and my personality trait, I guess that will step up and defend myself when I feel like I'm being taken advantage of.
I am just so grateful that that is a piece that I have just internally within me. I am the kind of person that will not only stand up for other people, but I will stand up for myself. So that's it for gratitude this week. Let's talk about Overcoming Fear of failure. Well, first of all, let's discuss what does fear of failure have to do with the law of attraction? Because this whole podcast is supposed to be about the law of attraction, right? Well, fear of failure keeps us frozen.
And one of the things that we discuss on a regular basis is that in order to Attract the things that we want and in order to receive the things that we want, we need to take inspired action. We need to do what we can from where we are with what we've got. Like that's just a piece of it. You can't just sit around on your couch and wait for the doorbell to ring with your new Ferrari and assume it's gonna show up because it's not. It's not just gonna show up if you're doing nothing. And you can say, well, Kayla, I believe that the law of attraction says that I don't have to do anything.
I just have to desire and I just have to believe. Well, that's true to a certain extent. It's not your job to figure out how it comes about. That is not your job, In fact, you shouldn't be messing in that zone. Let the Universe figure out how it's gonna come about and how things are going to work out for you. I agree. You don't have to be doing anything in that sense. You just have to put it out there. You have to believe and you have to stay in alignment. All of those things are true, but a piece of really making it happen is to be in tune with your intuition and be in tune with the messages that the Universe is sending you messages, like I talked about last week with angel numbers, be in tune.
And when you get a message to take action, you need to take action. You literally have to do something at some point when the Universe says, okay, it's time, take action. So when we're talking about Overcoming, Fear of Failure, what we're talking about is so many times we know how to get started, we know what to do, but we don't. We stay frozen and stuck because we are afraid of failing. I really want to talk about that with you because the first point that really drove home to me and what I was reading today is that it's okay to fail In fact.
We should want to fail. We should want to have failures in life because if we're not failing, we're not learning, we're not growing. Here's what I mean by that. If we're not taking any risks, we're not learning, we're not progressing, we're not moving forward. And when we wanna go from where we're at, which is this mediocre life that's average that everybody else is living, we're stuck in the rat race, we're working for somebody else. We wanna be debt-free. We wanna be financially independent.
We want to have loving relationships and a nice big house and a family and vacations and travel and good health and all of the things we want, all the things that no one else has or the people we know don't have. Well, if we want things that we don't have, something's got to change. And the only way to make something change is to take risk, to take action. And there's gonna be times that you take action and it doesn't work out.
And that's the piece I wanna address today, because it doesn't mean that the Universe isn't on your side. It doesn't mean it wasn't inspired action, it doesn't mean that you weren't supposed to do that thing or you weren't supposed to try that. What it means is you have some growing to do. I'm gonna say that again. When you have failure, it's not a failure. It's a sign that you have some growing to do. Here's what I mean by the growth.
Let's talk about riding a bike for a minute. The first time you rode a bike and I have to just assume everyone listening to this podcast has ridden a bike before, and maybe you haven't, but I'm gonna assume that you have ridden a bike and you know how to ride a bike. and I want you to think back to when you were learning to ride a bike. Now, when you're learning to ride a bike, think about the first time you fall. Did you stop? Did you give up? Did you say, I can't do this. This isn't for me.
I guess I'm not supposed to ride a bike. Well, I guarantee if you know how to ride a bike today, that's not what occurred. For some reason or another, you got back up and you got on that bike. At some point you might've fallen multiple times. But here we are today and you know how to ride a bike. When you give yourself multiple opportunities, when you don't give up, when you chase your dreams, when you go after what you want, when you keep getting on the bike, eventually you're gonna learn to ride that bike.
And not only are you going to learn to ride that bike, there will come a day that riding a bike is something you can do every 20 years and you can still pick up a bike and get on it and ride and and do it well in life. We don't take things in the perspective that we should. We look at things that feel big or were embarrassed, or maybe the failure that we had lost us money or lost us recognition or lost something, lost us our ego.
It's hard to fail. It's hard to own up to our mistakes. It's hard to get back up on the bike, but the failure is how we grow. The failure is what tunes us in to learning what we need to learn. Failure inspires winners and it defeats losers. Let me say that again. Failure inspires winners and it defeats losers.
So the first question I wanna ask you is, are you a winner or are you a loser? And let me reword that. Do you want to be a winner or do you want to be a loser? Because someone who fails, if they're a winner, they get back up on the bike and it doesn't defeat them. What it does is it inspires them to keep trying. It motivates them. It encourages them to try again to try harder until they achieve the very thing that they're going for. Losers fail and give up.
They say it's too hard. I don't want that. I don't wanna get hurt. I don't wanna lose Again, I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to take that risk. I don't wanna put myself out there. But what happens when we're talking about going after the life of our dreams is if we give up, if we give in, we're never gonna get there. Like I said, we can't just say to the Universe, sorry, that's too hard. And still think that that giant house And, that dream honeymoon vacation is just gonna show up for us.
That's not what happens when we give up on our dreams. The Universe gives up on our dreams. And I don't mean that the Universe gives up on us because the Universe never gives up on us. But you're not in alignment to receive and you're not going to receive if you've given up on yourself and you've given up on the opportunity. Let's talk about a couple people, people that you know maybe not personally but have heard of, who have failed over and over and over again and continue to get back up and be successful.
Now, I know for certain there's professional athletes that do that every day if it happens all the time. And think about how many winning sports teams actually lose games before they go on to win the championships. It happens all the time. But I know for certain you've heard of Thomas, Edison, Thomas, Edison invented the light bulb, and I am fairly certain. You also know that story because he didn't invent the light bulb the first time that he tried.
And maybe you don't know how many times Thomas Edison tried before he was successful, but records state he tried 2,774 times before he successfully invented the light bulb 2,774 times. That's not what I'm asking from you. I'm not asking you to try something 2,774 times, but can you imagine If you did?
Can you imagine If, you believed so strongly in yourself, so strongly in your ability to create your ability to manifest the desires of your heart, to bring your goals and your dreams and your visions to reality? If, you believed so strongly that you got up 2,774 times before you reached your achievement. I'm telling you, there is so much in that story and I know you know that story.
But let me share with you a story you might not know you've probably heard of or tried Kentucky Fried Chicken. And if you're familiar with Kentucky Fried Chicken, you're probably also familiar with Colonel Sanders, but you might not know Colonel Sanders story. Colonel Sanders was a successful businessman who owned his own business, and when he was 66, he lost his business and he was completely living off of social security.
He was basically broke and he needed to come up with a way to try and live a better lifestyle, try and create a better life for himself. And so what did he do? He sold his chicken recipe. Well, that sounds nice and easy, like a cute little story with a bow on top, right? But guess how many nos he got before he got someone to buy his chicken recipe?
Colonel Sanders was told no. 1009 times. 1009 people said, I am not interested in your fried chicken recipe. And if you've tried K F C If, you've tried Kentucky Fried Chicken, you know it's pretty dang good. Can you imagine 1,009 people trying that chicken and saying, no, not interested, but here's the thing, on his 1010th try, somebody bought his recipe.
And now that is a brand that is world recognized. It's not just in the United States. That brand is all over the world. People know K F C. People know Kentucky Fried Chicken. And here's the thing, he was 66 years old when he did that. 66. It is never too late. So I want you to stop for a minute and think about the things that you are putting on hold.
Where are you stopped in your tracks when it comes to manifesting the desires of your heart? Are you not taking action that you know you could be taking because you are afraid of failing? Let's be real. This is just me and you we're having a conversation. I can't even hear your replies, but I want you to think about it for a minute. Are you stuck in taking action that you know you could be taking because you know that you might fail?
I want you to think about that for just a couple of minutes while you're thinking. I wanna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors, and when we come back, I want to give you some insights that I had this afternoon in regards to how we can overcome our fear of failure. I'll be right back with you. Welcome back to Attract It. With EASE.
We have been talking about Overcoming, Fear of Failure. We were discussing how fear of failure can work against us in trying to manifest the desires of our heart. Because part of the manifestation process is taking inspired action. And if we're afraid of failing, if our ego gets in the way, if we're worried about the money we may lose or the way that we may be perceived, if we don't succeed, no matter what's going on in our minds, if we are worried about failing, we're stuck and we're not moving in the direction of our dreams, we're not aligning ourselves with what the Universe is trying to bring us.
So here's what I want you to think about in relationship to fear of failure. A lot of times our fears are actually induced or inspired by those around us. And oftentimes it's those that are closest to us. It could be our spouse or significant other. It could be our coworkers, our boss, our friends, our siblings, our parents.
Oftentimes the people that are closest to us who are supposed to be our biggest supporters are the very people in our lives that are talking us out of our dreams. Those are often the people that are saying, you know, you're taking on too much. you know, maybe you should just take a break. you know, maybe you just aren't meant to do that. Whatever they're saying to us, they mean well.
And they actually are trying to be supportive by like supporting you in it's okay to give up, it's okay to change directions. It's okay to just, you know, resort yourself to mediocrity, but they're not actually helping us when they're having those conversations because what they're doing is they are feeding the fear of failure. They're basically adding to the idea that it's not possible. They're opening the door and saying, stop trying.
Take a break. It's okay. You don't have to. It's okay to not be that good. Or maybe that's not meant for you, or maybe you should just try something else. And what they're doing is they're talking you out of the very thing that you want most. And so here is how you overcome that. It is pretty simple, but I want you to take this very seriously. The way you overcome that fear of failure is you do not take any advice from a person who has not already achieved the very thing that you are working towards.
I'm gonna say that again. Don't take advice from a person who doesn't already have the thing that you're going after if they haven't done it, how do they know it's not possible? If they haven't done it, how do they know you are not meant to do it? If they haven't done it, how do they know it's not just one more try and then you're there. How do they know? Why would you take advice from someone who has not done the very thing you're working to do? That's the last person you should be taking advice from.
That's the last person you should be listening to. But we tend to do it because it tends to be our spouse, our significant other, our parents, our coworkers, our boss, our friends, our neighbors. The people that are closest to us are the ones that are trying to talk us out of it. And guess what? They're trying to talk us out of it because they're either jealous or they don't understand because they have not been through it, they have not done it. Maybe they haven't seen it done so in their minds it's not possible or it's not possible for you.
Well, I am here to tell you, it is possible for you. You can do it. You just need to get over the fear of failure. And when you fall, you need to pick yourself back up and you need to try again because the Universe will guide you in the direction of your dreams. The Universe will inspire you to take action. And even if it doesn't work the first time, all that means is that you need to grow a little more.
Every time you get back up on that bicycle, you get better. Every single attempt that you make, you're that much closer. And there will be so many times that you do do it the very first try. All you have to do is take that step, take that leap, walk through that door, walk into the room where there's more doors for more rooms, more opportunities, more everything. So many times it's the first try. But if you're stuck in that place of I've tried and I, don't think it's for me.
I've tried and I've failed, or you're stuck in the place of, I'm not gonna try because I'm afraid. I'm afraid to fail. I don't wanna be embarrassed. I can't afford the loss. I don't know what I would do if it doesn't work out. I don't have a backup plan, I don't have plan B. Guess what? That failure will get you to the place you need to be for your success. Again, remember Colonel, Sanders 1,009 knows before someone bought his recipe and look at where he is today.
He was 66 years old when that happened. It's never too late for you. You just need to believe in yourself. You need to say yes. You need to overcome that fear. You need to take that first step and you need to keep trying. I don't know who needs to hear this today, but I needed it. When I read it, I was like, oh my gosh, that's powerful stuff I needed that I needed to know. It's okay to fail.
And again, it's not because I'm necessarily feeling like a failure right now, but it just drove home to me in all of the emotions I was feeling where I was feeling stressed. I was feeling burned out. I was feeling taken advantage of. I was feeling whelmed when I read that it's okay to fail and we actually should want to fail at times in our lives. It's like it gave me permission to not be in the perfect mental head space. It gave me permission to have a bad day. It gave me permission to not be my best all the time.
Sometimes we just set these unrealistic expectations for ourselves on how we need to behave, how we need to to act, how we need to respond, and we're going to make mistakes. and I have to tell you, it's really hard for me to be in a bad mental head space for multiple days because I know how much that's putting me off track from what I'm trying to Attract. But also because I just expect myself to be an example of positivity.
I expect myself to be able to overcome anything and just let it roll off my shoulders. And by reading this today and thinking about the fact that it's okay to fail and failure is part of the process, failure is what we should be seeking because it inspires us to try harder. It helps us grow and it gets us closer to our dreams. It gave me permission to have a bad day. And here's the funny thing about that.
When I gave myself permission to have a bad day today, I ended up having a good day. It's weird. It's weird how that worked. I've been in a bad mood and going through all of this drama and stress for nearly a week, and the minute that I gave myself permission, the minute that I said, it's okay, it's okay to have that bad day. It's okay to not be perfect. It's okay to not meet your own expectations is the minute that my emotions and my energy shifted and my day changed.
I had a great day. That leads me into this week's action item, and it's probably obvious from what I said, but this week's action item is to notice who's cheering for you and notice who's trying to help you. I'm saying that in air quotes help you by telling you it's okay to give up by telling you it's time to stop. It's telling you you're trying too hard.
It's telling you maybe it's not meant for you. Pay attention to those people because they mean well, but they're not assisting you. And the action item this week, aside from paying attention to that, is to not take advice from anyone who has not already achieved what you are going after. Don't listen to them. In fact, you probably should do exactly the opposite of whatever they tell you.
And maybe it's not truly exactly the opposite, but anyone's that's telling you that that's risky or it's not worth it or it's a bad idea or you're overworking yourself or you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that, or you should do this or you should do that. If they have not achieved the very thing that you are working towards, don't pay one it bit of attention to them because they don't know what it takes and they don't know what you have and they don't know what you deserve. And you deserve to have everything your heart desires.
You deserve to live in happiness. You deserve to be fulfilled and be joyful and have abundance and health and wealth and love. You deserve it all. Don't let someone who means well take that from you. That's my action item for you this week. I hope that this message is hitting home for somebody out there. It's a powerful message. It meant a lot to me today. and I hope it means something to you. It's been really fun chatting with you today.
I'm looking forward to next week. Have a good one. Bye-bye. 