Nothing Great Is Easy
“Nothing great is easy” – lessons in motivation from an English Channel swimmer
Fear of failure
Hi everyone, this is my third blog about the motivating factors behind my English Channel swim, and in the last ten months I have had the privilege of telling my tale to many interested people.
Two of the questions I’m always asked was “what would you have done if you failed” or “did you think about stopping”.
Quite simply I don’t know, as I wasn’t going to fail and I certainly wasn’t going to stop. During my preparation, there were things I could do to reduce my chances of failure e.g. train hard, get used to cold water, finding out which food I would take and enjoy; and there were things I couldn’t control e.g. the weather, illness and injury along the way. I just didn’t worry about the things I couldn’t control and had such a laser-like focus on the things I could, when I stood on the beach at 1am and looked in the distance at the twinkling lights of France, there was nothing stopping me.
As I said in my last blog, my team communicated with me in the water with a message board. On the board was a picture of one of the children I was raising money for. Even though I injured my shoulder, every time I saw his picture, I remembered the reason for the swim and no matter what, I wasn’t going to fail.
I believe that one of the main reasons why people’s dreams remain a dream and not a reality, is due to their fear of failure. “What will people think? What will they say? Have I let them down? Was that a waste of money?” are common thoughts but as Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
Whether your challenge is climbing K2 or climbing the stairs, we must look to continue to challenge ourselves, take risks and square up to the chance of failure and stare it in the face and as Woody Allen said “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative”!
But then what about the next challenge…? Should I stop here and nestle down with contentment at the achievement, or should I look to see what’s next and continue to challenge myself, test the boundaries and once again flirt with the chance of failure…..?
Should I relax and enjoy my success? Should I sit back, light the fire, pour a nice cup of hot chocolate and play safe, afraid of trying something else, but content in the knowledge that I’ve achieved a personal goal? Some will think so. I don’t….
In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt also delivered this now famous address in Paris.
“It is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.
The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…….. and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though chequered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Remember what Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough”!
Nick is a company executive, performance coach and motivational speaker based in London. Nick can be contacted at nick@nickalford.com or through his website www.nickalford.com and on Twitter @nickspeaker.
