In 24 years of business we have had success and failures. Two great lessons have come of both the successes and the failures. The first I talked about in my blog post The Battle of Fear. Is your fear simply false evidence appearing real? Or it there a true dictionary definition classic reason for the unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat? The second major lesson success and failure has taught me is that you simply must be willing to reinvent yourself and your business.
During each step of our growth there were moments when I felt paralyzed with fear. What if we fail? What if we fail publicly? What if we lose money? What if we grow and I have to do all that work? What if, what if, what if? We can be paralyzed by the what if’s of life. I had to only allowed for a moment of paralyzing what if fear—and then move on. I might confide my fear to my husband or spill it to my trusted girlfriends. It is okay to expose fear to the light. In fact, it is good, because in the light you might realize that your fear is unfounded or not quite as grizzly as you once thought. You may even realize that the support system you have of family and friends will help carry you though whatever you may face ahead.
In business I found sometimes that we were on the road to moderate success. We evaluated whether that was the success we were seeking, or if we needed to reinvent ourselves, our products, our services and so forth to get us through the knot hole in our business. We could have chosen to by happy on one side of that knot hole and stopped. Or we could decide to reach for what was on the other side of that stretching, growing, and maybe painful business growth.
“Failure doesn’t come from falling down failure comes from not getting up.” Zig Ziglar
This struggle is real, but most of the things we fear are not. I try not to give into it and trust God.