This past semester, I failed many times. I am a CAP mentor here in the business school, and there was a couple times this semester that a mentee reached out to me, set up an appointment, and I failed to meet up with them. The students that this happened with were ones that repeatedly come to see me, so we had built a strong mentor-mentee relationship, which made this instance reflect even more poorly on me. I consider this a failure because it strays from the professionalism that I strive for each day on the job, and it gives others the idea that I am not punctual, don't care about my responsibilities, or am simply disorganized, all things that I wish not to be perceived as. From this, I learned that I need to start holding myself more accountable, especially when there are other parties involved who will also be affected by my actions. It made me realize that I need to get myself together because if something like this were to happen at a future job, it would be an even bigger problem and could result in lost clients, etc.
Personally, I am so afraid of failure that sometimes I won't even try certain things if there is a chance that I will fail at them. I think this really puts me in a box sometimes and doesn't allow me to get out of my comfort zone. I have trouble accepting failure, so I am very hard on myself at all times and it plays a role in what things I choose to venture out and do. I think that right now, I am definitely more likely to take a risk than I was a few months ago, so I am making progress in this arena.
I really like your post McKenna and agree with you that it is hard sometimes to accept failure and try new things that you are scared of failing at. That is how you improve and end up succeeding in whatever you want to do, failure is normal and expected. I think that happens to me mostly with internship applications because I am so scared that I on't get it that I do not even apply.
ReplyDeleteMcKenna,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job in the post of explaining a time when you had failed and instead of only treating it as a negative you turned it into a learning experience. To be able to turn a bad time into a good experience is one of the key traits of successful entrepreneurs. Failure is something that once you embrace it your potential will reach a new limit.