STOP BEING AFRAID OF FAILURE - The One Lesson Every Entrepreneur Should Learn

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”-Winston Churchill

We’ve been conditioned to fear failure. We are trained to seek validationbefore taking any actions. We are told that inaction is better than failure. Ithink we should start to seriously challenge that mindset.

You spend the first 22 years or so of your life, if not more, tryingincredibly hard to “succeed” in school. You assumed that getting an “A” inclass meant success. If you ever got a “D” or an “F”, it wouldn’t be a goodday at home. Sadly this behavior is predominant not only in school, but in oursocial lives as well. We still seek validation before taking action. We are soafraid of rejection – think about asking an attractive person out, or givinga speech to an audience. We are trained, year after year, that there is novalue in failure. But there is.

If you are an entrepreneur starting a business, you should already know thatthe odds are against you. This is simply a statistical fact. Not only that,but most successes rely on countless variables, and most of these variablesare out of your control. By deduction, most successes are lucky ones.

But I have good news for you: Failure is one of the best things that canever happen to you. Why? Because we, as humans, are motivated and driven bygrowth — mentally, physically, financially, academically, etc. And failuresprovide an opportunity for much more growth, knowledge, and wisdom thanlucky successes.

I meet new entrepreneurs all the time, and they pitch great ideas to me. Butmost entrepreneurs, seeking validation, ask me whether or not they shouldpursue their ideas. Who in the world knows whether someone’s idea is goingto be a huge business or not? There is only one way to find out — to go doit. Start your business. If it doesn’t work out, learn from it. Try not torepeat the same mistakes on your next attempt.

This is exactly what we do at Crowdtilt. And it’sthe exact opposite of the culture I experienced at other startups back inEgypt. Back then, “failure was not an option.” Even if it wasn’t voicedexplicitly, it was ingrained in how we approached problems and management. Itcreated a culture of fear. We were ambitious and strong and capable. But wewere afraid of failure. And that meant every decision-tree erred on the side ofsafety and preservation. And those decisions do not lead to a big company. Ofcourse, it’s absolutely fine if your ambitions are different. But if yourambitions are to build or be a part of a huge business, then a willingness totake risks and not only accept — but embrace the prospect of failure isindispensable.

TL;DR

You need to become comfortable with taking action, making decisions, andaccepting failures if (and when) they happen. Learn from those failures as muchas you can; then start again. Determination is one of the few things that youcan control. That’s what’s gonna get you from failures to successes. To put itanother way, I strongly believe that you cannot succeed if you haven’t failed.Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s part of it.

EDIT: discussion is onHacker News

原文：http://dsog.info/blog/Entrepreneurship/Hacking/Technology/2013/04/17/the-one-lesson-every-entrepreneur-should-learn/