fearing failure

“If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.” - Kobe Bryant

We’ve been listening to a lot of Kobe Bryant interviews in the car lately—it’s basketball season, and as talented at the game as both of my boys are, there are intangibles, mostly mindset and mental, that the greats have that they don’t have–and they shouldn’t at 14 and 12.

I know if I try to tell them these things, they aren’t going to listen—I still talk to them about it and try to be an example of these intangibles, but I know it's in one ear and out of the other. I’m hopeful that hearing Kobe say these things and watching films of how he lived them inspire them and help them understand these important mindsets that I didn’t understand at their age…a frustrating sidebar, but I actually think I did understand a lot of this, but I just didn’t know and therefore wasn’t aware of how to use them to my advantage.

There are countless Kobe quotes I could have shared today, but I chose this one because it applies to more than basketball. It’s very similar to the famous Henry Ford quote, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”

If I keep the quote on the basketball court, so many people miss game-winning free throws or shots because they are afraid they will miss—they are afraid they will fail. This fear causes them to think too much about their form, how they’ll feel when they miss, or another distracting thought, leading to them shooting incorrectly and missing the shot.

The fear of missing and failing directly leads to their “failure” and missing.

Outside of basketball, your fear of failure has the same impact on whatever you are afraid to do.

For example, I almost let my fear prevent me from even getting started on the big project I mentioned the other day in a Note for ‘25. I know fear can keep me from completing it—the fear manifests itself in excuses of why I can’t do all of the planning, get people to it, or whatever else my mind thinks of, and if I allow the fear to when I believe those excuses, I give up. If I give up, I fail because of my fear of failing, not because I couldn’t actually pull off the project. I’m sorry to keep this project vague, but I’ll share more later this month. There are some clues floating around social media if you look hard enough.

So don’t let your fear of failure prevent you from accomplishing your goals and visions–and remember, there is no such thing as failure anyway.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC

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