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Just Start
How many times in your life have you procrastinated? Delayed taking action on a business or passion project? If you’re honest with yourself, more often than you’d like to admit, right? Don’t beat yourself up. It’s very normal human behavior. But why, and what can we do to fix it?
The most common reason for not taking action is fear of failure. Americans in particular are brought up in a competitive environment where success is everything, and you get scorned for being a loser, a failure. It seems that everyone you meet is hustling five jobs or projects, aiming for that lofty goal of success. Ironically, most people don’t know how to measure success, defaulting to the cliched dream of being rich. Well, each to their own. I just urge you to at least consider what success means to you, because your fear of failure might simply be because you aren’t aware of what success looks like. You can’t aim for something you don’t recognize.
Don’t fall for the axiom, “If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.”
No one wants to fail. No one sets out to fail, yet failure is healthy. I guarantee you all but the very luckiest successful people suffered a string of failures along the way. We learn from failure. It is good for us. It builds character and hones strategy. Nevertheless, most people would rather not start a project at all, than risk the pain of failure, even though it’s…