The day started off very poorly for me. I was still stressed about a lost check I found out about the night before and I had just realized gaping wholes in one of my many areas of responsibilities…donation tracking.
Some of you know that my main job with Envision Atlanta is Business Development Team Lead. It’s my job to help the team start small businesses and facilitate their growth. However, I have a very busy second roll with the team, Site Administrator. The second job has grown as the site has and I’ve often had to back up and figure out what needs to be done and how to do it. Back to my morning…
I could feel the anxiety growing within me. “You should have known and anticipated this a year ago,” I told myself. “How could I have?” I argued back, “The position grows with the site, donor relations wasn’t listed on my job description!” It’s hard to reason with yourself when “you should have known” keeps coming back. Thankfully God gave me the grace to come up with a solution that will help me move forward and make tracking information easier.
I’ve met person after person this year who want to start their own business but who are afraid of what will happen if they fail. The last time I opened up Facebook the first post I saw said this:
“I know its TOTALLY cliche but… I’m having one of those fear of failure moments. What is it you’re supposed to do when you don’t want to try because you might fail?”
So what do we do to combat the fear of failing? I think it helps to identify what we are actually afraid of. What I’ve discovered is I am more afraid of what people will say when I fail than if I will fail. Very few people fail and cause major damage to others. There are relatively few lives on the line when we are trying to decide if we should start writing that book, or paint that picture, start that business, or even ask that person out. Is your ego on the line? Yes, your ego may suffer but isn’t that what’s holding you back anyway?
Beginning this year my team is going to talk through failure. “How did you fail this week?” is going to become a weekly question. Why? I want my team to be failing. I want them to fall down, get back up and try again. I want them to create better and better by making mistakes and fixing them because if no one on the team is failing we aren’t advancing into new areas and new ideas.
Brian Valois 