Perhaps I have listened to too many bro-podcasts over the last few days, but I am led to believe that a massive fear of failure exists in people. I fail at so many things that perhaps I am desensitised to the whole experience, but there is absolutely nothing to fear from not getting the result you wanted.

I should preface this with a warning about taking unneeded risks and not ruining things that make huge changes to your life — but outside this, fail hard and often. Failure is the way you find out what suits you best. It’s the way to round off the corners of all the square things you find to make sure something fits as you need it to. As Alain de Botton elegantly put it “It’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse getting to the end and realising it isn’t what you wanted”.

How on earth do you even know what you want without failing at a million things first? I’ve tried Flip phones, and journals, notebooks, and hundreds of other things. All which fell flat on their face, and from the failure I learnt lessons, and improved the way my life works.

None of these things I pointed out above matter, it’s easy to fail at these things. Don’t even get me started on the declined job applications, rebuffed dating advances and miserable attempts at being a writer. At the time some of them seemed like world ending events, but I learnt things, I worked out what I wanted and and moved forward.

In many way I learnt how to fail and now I will never shy away from trying new things. Exploring my thoughts around subjects. Working out a millions ways to do a job before I dive in. Throwing a high percentage of draft blog posts into the bin. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, it is the not doing part that sucks. The wondering what if, or the missed opportunity because fear froze you. That sucks, failure doesn’t.