I’m a career mentor. I offer career advice to my subscribers.
I send daily success quotes to them. Annie has finally convinced me that I should do some blog posts in which I explain the quotes and what they mean to me.
The quote for May 2, 2014 was from Juliana Hatfield, an American singer and songwriter. It read…
“If you want to achieve things in life, you’ve just got to do them, and if you’re talented and smart, you’ll succeed.”
I don’t know if Juliana wears Nike’s, but she should. I love her “just do it” message. However, I’ve found that even if you’re talented and smart, you won’t succeed at everything you try. But that’s a not a good reason to not try. Why don’t people try? When it comes right down to it, I’ve found that most people don’t try because they are afraid.
I hate the F word; no not that one, I hate the word fear.
Fear is the enemy of self-confidence – and is career success killer. People fear failure, criticism and rejection. It’s only normal. We all want to feel good about ourselves. Failure, criticism and rejection are not pleasant experiences. They lower our self-esteem and make us feel bad about ourselves, so we often avoid doing things that we think might lead to failure, criticism or rejection. However, if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to have the courage to do things that might result in failure, criticism or rejection.
Failure, criticism and rejection provide you with the opportunity to grow and develop – to succeed.
You can’t take failure, criticism and rejection personally. Failure, criticism and rejection are outcomes. They are a result of things you have done, things you have tried. They are not who you are. We all make mistakes and fail. We all do things that cause others to criticize or reject us. This doesn’t mean that we are failures. It means that we have made some poor choices and done some not-so-smart things.
Failure, criticism and rejection provide the opportunity to start over – hopefully a little smarter.
Buckminster Fuller once said, “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.”
That’s why fear is the enemy of self-confidence and career success.
Take it from a career mentor. If your fear of failure, criticism and rejection paralyzes you to the point where you aren’t willing to take calculated risks, you’ll never learn anything or accomplish any of your goals.
Don’t be too hard on yourself when you fail, or when others criticize or reject you.
My best career advice is to put your energy into figuring out why you failed and then do something different. Here are four questions to ask yourself the next time you fail, or get criticized or rejected.
- Why did I fail? Why did I get criticized or rejected? What did I do to cause the failure, criticism or rejection?
- What could I have done to prevent the failure, criticism or rejection?
- What have I learned from this situation?
- What will I do differently the next time?
If you do this, you’ll be using failure, criticism and rejection to your advantage.
In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.” I know it’s hard to see the benefit or opportunity in failure, criticism and rejection. But it’s there – you just have to look hard enough. But it all begins by facing your fear and acting. The less you fear failure, the more career success you’ll create. And, as Juliana Hatfield says, if you’re talented and smart you’ll succeed. Your failures will simply be stepping stones on your road to success.
The career mentor point here is simple common sense. Successful people do stuff to move forward to their career success goals –even if they might fail. They face their fears and act. They follow the advice in Tweet 36 in Success Tweets. “Don’t be afraid to fail. You fail only if you don’t learn something from the experience. Treat every failure as an opportunity to grow.” Our most common fears are failure, criticism, and rejection. Choose to find – and use – the learning opportunity in your failures and you will become more self-confident and successful. It’s sad but true – failure, criticism and rejection are often the price you pay for becoming a career success. Facing your fear of failure, criticism and rejection, and acting will pay big dividends when it comes to your life and career success.
You can download a free copy of Success Tweets and begin receiving my daily inspirational quotes by going to www.SuccessTweets.com and entering your name and email address.
For more posts by Bud Bilanich please visit here.
JenningsWire.com is created by National Publicist, Annie Jennings of the NYC based PR Firm, Annie Jennings PR. Annie Jennings PR specializes in marketing books for getting authors booked on radio talk show interviews, TV shows in major online and in high circulation magazines and newspapers. Annie also works with speaker and experts to build up powerful platforms of credibility and influence.
