Carol Burnett on falling down

Comedy star Carol Burnett has seen her fair share of good and bad. But she points out that learning that you can get through failure is part of being able to succeed:

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.
 

Some people are frozen by the fear of failure. But, as babies, we had no fear. We saw the dream of trying to do more. Each of us failed time and time again as a baby – but we didn’t see it as failure. Whether it was learning to smil,e crawl, walk, talk or play, we all tried. We believed in the goal more than in falling down.

But, somewhere along the way, we start putting limits on ourselves. Maybe it’s because of what other people told us. Or because we stopped seeing ourselves in a good light. Or we tried and it hurt so much when we failed. All those experiences – even the bad ones – are important and sometimes the lessons are worth hearing. But if you have dreams you won’t pursue because you’re afraid you can’t survive the failure, maybe it’s time to reassess things.

What’s so bad about failure?
What could you do to make the failure less scary?
Do you have to go after the dream all at once?
Could you set goals?

In an upcoming post, we’ll explore ways of breaking big scary dreams into manageable pursuits.

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