‘There’s Fear in the Air’ Series
My father was the picture of a Marine, a godly man, a devoted father and in his later days he never compromised the integrity of his heart. On his tombstone we have his life message:
So, what makes one person courageous, and one person buckle under pressure?
Only one thing: Never give up. The willingness to keep trying, keep failing until you make are successful.
HONOR, noun. A testimony of esteem; any expression of respect or of high estimation by words or actions; as the honors of war; military honors; funeral honors; civil honors. *
Honor shows a high respect, a great esteem. Many names refer to that quality. It is good to remember the meaning of your name if you have a name that refers to honor. Disgrace or shame are antonyms.
COURAGE, noun [Latin, the heart.] Bravery; intrepidity; that quality of mind which enables men to encounter danger and difficulties with firmness, or without fear or depression of spirits; valor; boldness; resolution. It is a constituent part of fortitude; but fortitude implies patience to bear continued suffering. *
Courage is strength in the face of fear or grief. It is the opposite of cowardice. This is a difficult concept to understand, but when failure is accepted as an end result, then there is no strength and cowardice becomes the result. But if failing stirs someone to try again, their strength is revived, and courage is the result.
COMMITMENT, noun. The act of pledging or engaging; or the act of exposing or endangering. *
Commitment – Dedication, loyalty, promise, undertaking, promise, pledge. The greatest deterrent to having a strong commitment and following through is an underlying trust issue. You may want to check out Repairing Lost Trust if you have an underlying trust issue.
Celebrate Your Failures
Celebrate your failures. Remembering failure is not an option, we have to never give up. We remember to celebrate any success we make; we reward ourselves liberally for any hint of a success. So why do we omit rewards for failure? Most likely it is because we are afraid to fail. We need to turn that around and reward ourselves for failures. Failures are steppingstones. you cannot get across a pond without either a bridge or steppingstones. In work situations, we hear frequently that we need to report a failure and we hear “so we can learn from it”. It is usually not the norm to learn from the failure, and it is sometimes used as a way to punish a fellow co-worker. No one wants to be “written up.”
Try to fail. Remember that it is important to never give up. That implies there are many failures before you finally reach success. That sounds like the craziest advice I have heard. When I overheard a person say that she was terrified of failing, I started rethinking what it means to fail. Failing just means that the thing you tried to do was not successful. History is full of unsuccessful attempts before something is invented. Life needs failures in order to experience successes. The concept of fear of failing is a heavy burden in our society. It probably is the most difficult thing to overcome because our society’s framework is built on the fear of failure. Trying to fail is just not allowing yourself the option to fail. Never giving up. Find something that you are good at and do not give up until you succeed at it.
Know your limitations. I have a son who truly believes that just because he wants to do something, he can do it. I encouraged that as much as I could. With a young child it could be a good thing to let him fail when he has your support. But if it becomes an obstacle to what he could be doing successfully, then it becomes a negative pursuit to avoid. A good workplace environment will assess the strengths and weaknesses of those who are involved in a project and use them both to the advantage of the project. A person, child or adult, if they have not been trained or have an intuitive knowledge of the skill they need, they need to not be assigned that role, to protect them from failure. They would be best off training with a skilled person or receive some training first. An observant parent, boss or manager should be able to monitor that balance.
Avoid Rewarding Failure in the Wrong Way
Kids and adults are aware that we can complain our way into a position in many different ways, according to one source. * That concept is teaching a child to fail and to accept that failure. That is not beneficial at all.
We feel that we cannot let our young children fail at sports, so we add a fourth and fifth award, so they do not give up. The reward for failure is the option to try again and again until success is achieved. The standards for success have fallen to the standard of failure. We allow kids to pass school grades and graduate with less than adequate preparation for the world. It is not the grade that counts, but whether the student learns and applies the information that he or she receives.
Excuses: People do not want to fail, they want to start over, so they do not have to go through failure. It hurts to fail, and we are taught in life that anything that hurts is not good. The pain of an injury is a good thing. It is good that a person will see that he is injured because he has pain. Pain shouts out that something needs attention. So does Failure.
Accept pain, accept failure – so your successes will grow.
* Sources: https://nypost.com/2018/06/02/rewarding-failure-has-become-an-american-epidemic/; http://webstersdictionary1828.com/
This ‘There’s Fear in the Air’ Series was first started before the current COVID crisis on September 3, 2019. This series has prepared me for the future.
