Overcoming Fear Of Failure By Vicki Zakrzewski

I failed to reach the top of the rock climbing wall on the playground, and as a result, I have strived even harder to reach the peak of success in everything I do. Instead of becoming discouraged and disappointed in myself, I found a way to improve myself for my next challenge. Learning from my mistakes has molded me into an improved person while giving me the motivation to keep pushing forward. Failure has taught me the importance of learning from your errors and trying again, no matter how difficult it may be. Without lessons like these, I would not be the motivated, independent person that I am today. I will continue to fail and try again until I achieve my goal of reaching the

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

In addition, the willingness to learn through failure can help to reach the desired destiny. Nearly everybody fears failing, because it has been associated with all sorts of negativity. Although an optimistic look on the other side of tripping or falling down in life can make someone to be successful in

Failure is widely viewed as negative. While this portrayal of failure is justified, it does not tell the whole story. Failure is a learning experience because it explains the errors made, and then the person figures out how to fix the mistakes. The way individuals respond to the failure is a great way to evaluate his/her character. There

I am not new to the idea of failing, but I refuse to accept failure as a mistake I will be remembered by. Through recent experiences I have learned how to react to failure, ask for help, and move on with my life.

Failure is a missed opportunity, poor test grade, or missing the game-winning goal. Depending on its scale, certain failures can cause one individual to cry and another to shake it off. In school, one individual's failure is another one's success. I experience failure like this but at a different scale because to me, failure is more than disappointing my parents or teachers. I feel like I am defined by that failure, and that it will never vanish. This particular failure defines me and will stay with me throughout my school years.

Failure can feel devastating when you are living through the experience. I felt this way during one of the greatest failures in my life, failing to qualify for State History Day in my junior year of high school. This was my third History Day competition and I had previously qualified for State. While I entered the event with confidence from previous competitions and a final product that I thought was close to perfect, experiencing failure this time taught me how to strive for the best that I can be, persevere through tough times, and that sometimes your best isn't always the best.

I’ve learned that failure is a common part of life, but how you perceive failure is what matters the most. There are a lot of uncontrollable variables that can dictate a situation. However, the one aspect we are able to control is our state of mind and it is imperative to have a positive mental attitude. As described by Shawn Achor, in Before Happiness, if you allow a pessimistic mind set to control your outlook on a situation. Then, one will only focus on all the aspects of the failure instead of looking on how to improve the situation. Perfectly stated by Winston S. Churchill “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; and optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Failure is all around us, but so is success. Both result from one thing, setting goals. I set goals to achieve a sense of accomplishment when they are completed. From doing my homework every night to getting 100 percent on a test, goals help me focus my time on the activities that I must accomplish. Taking responsibility for your own failures is difficult. My failure makes me wonder what could I have done differently. I was forced to ask myself that question after Cross Country Districts Junior year.

Failure is a word that covers all aspects of education to a student. But when does the failure begin? Some say it starts at home with parents and some say it begins in the classroom with teachers. In Mary Sherry’s essay “In Praise of the F Word” she states that countless students do not have the skills they need to succeed. This can be very influential with education now a day. Educators and parents often praise students for simply showing up to class instead of praising those who work hard. Are we doing justice to the children of our future? No! We need to stop treating failure as our worst enemy and instead, embrace it with a positive attitude. Failure can show students where they went wrong and trying to fix it is the first part of success.

Failure for some, is one of the hardest things to come back from. When you do not succeed at something the first time around, you can develop false hope that you wont ever be able to accomplish that same goal, ever again. But it should be seen as the complete opposite. The effect of failing at a particular thing should give you even more drive and want to, achieve it. It shouldn't knock you down, but aspire you to be stronger and want what you are striving for, even more than you did before. I have gone through very many experiences where I have not received the outcome that I thought I deserved or wanted and I have felt like quitting. Knowing now that I didn't quit, makes the success of that one goal, that much better.

Children are always asking why. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have ten fingers? Yet after they begin school it is as though the curiosity dies. What is the best way to keep that curiosity burning, even when the problems become challenging? It is imperative that it is done correctly. “When Success Leads to Failure” by Jessica Lahey and “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Carol Dweck provides information that allows an insightful look into kids’ fear of failure, while one article calls for adults to encourage kids not to be afraid of failure, the other tells adults how to change the way kids are praised. When kids are raised to put faith in their natural ability and nothing more, it often leads to failure later in life. Due to the fact kids only have faith in natural ability, it teaches them to fear anything that challenges that.

As I discussed earlier in my writtings, I think that failure cannot be avoided and we are presented with failures to gain an opportunity to learn. Failures will be an aspect at some point professionally and or personally so that we can grow and develop as

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my