Dream big and dare to fail

Norman Vaughan once said Dream big and dare to fail. Having small dreams and being afraid to fail is the antithesis of this advice, and it's something many of us do, even though we may not want to admit it.

The two go hand in hand, if you are too afraid of failing you'll keep your dreams on a leash. But if you overcome that fear, and jump out there fully willing to completely fail, you free your mind to dream up new adventures and goals for your life.

Failure comes with trying, and a life of not trying will not leave you satisfied, so it's good to continually put yourself out there. And when it comes to failing, our egos are our own worst enemies.

As soon as things start going wrong, our defense mechanisms kick in, tempting us to do what we can to save face. Yet, these very normal reactions -- denial, chasing your losses, etc -- that wreak havoc on our ability to adapt.

I have learned a couple of things along the way. Firstly I must always try new things. I like to expose myself to lots of different ideas and love to try lots of different approaches, on the grounds that failure is common.

I also ask myself can I survive this failure? So I look for experimental approaches where there's lots to learn like projects with small downsides but bigger upsides.

I feel that too often we take on projects where the cost of failure is prohibitive, and we just hope for the best.

Then this part is easier said than done and that is to know when you've failed. We've been trained that persistence pays off so to me it almost feels wrong to cut my losses and label an idea a failure.

I feel that if one is truly self aware and listening closely after acting on one's idea, you can't go wrong.

I have now learned that being able to recognize a failure just means that you'll be able to re-cast it into something more likely to succeed.

And we're so used to feedback but we rarely give feedback to ourselves and only do that for others. It is essential for determining where we have succeeded and where we have failed. We should also get advice, not just from one person, but from several. We're so used to feedback and comments whether we are bloggers or release WSOs.

Remember that if the feedback is harsh, be objective, "take the venom out," and dig out the real advice.