I never hit anyone before, and I’ve never been hit… Taking a punch to the face hurts, but it also makes you stronger. My worst enemy at Muay-Thai is the fear of getting hit. If I’m afraid I’ll fail; it’s as simple as that, and it goes for every aspect of our lives.

If you’re afraid to fail at work you’ll never succeed, if you’re afraid to make mistakes, you’ll always be limited.

As human beings our priority is to survive, our body, our instincts force us to think about survival, we always see the safest option. In a way our nature is against us, it won’t let us go outside that safe zone, it won’t let us quit the jobs we hate because you might not find another, it won’t let us propose to that girl because she might say no, it won’t let us dare to take risks because we might fail and end up losing it all. Does that sound familiar dear reader? Let it sync in and think of when was the last time you hesitated and didn’t aim higher than what you know you can achieve.

I’ll share a secret with you, I loathe criticism, I like doing things perfectly, and I hate to be criticised for my work. I’ve learned to swallow it in and let critics teach me how to be better and let them build me but I’ll always hate criticism. Before I learned that, I always avoided doing mistakes, I avoided giving promises I am not absolutely sure that I can deliver, I avoided trying out new technology, I avoided doing anything that has risk so that I would never fail. That’s a myth, we always fail…

At many points in your life, you will fail regardless of how careful you are.

So what do we do, when we fail? What happens then?

A couple of days ago I walked up to a stranger in a pub and I played a joke on him, if you have met me before you’d already know that I’m not the type of person who would do such a thing, frankly because I don’t know what the outcome is, that guy can turn around and tell me to f**k off, why would I risk getting told to f**k off?

Luckily that didn’t happen, he laughed and gave me a fist bump.

But then my coach told me “well.. what if that happened and he did say that to you then what? You’d be offended and upset, but then you’ll get over it… so get over it!”

Failing is like tasting a bad cookie, just get over it

People say ask yourself “what’s the worst that can happen?”, maybe that works for some people but it doesn’t work for me, I can imagine a pretty bad scenario and that would discourage me from doing whatever it is i am doing that might introduce that scenario. Rather than asking yourself that, ask yourself “what’s the best that can happen?”

If I approach someone and point out a mistake they are doing in their business and suggest a solution that I am certain would improve their business routine, the best thing that can happen is that they’d go “Oh hold on you’re absolutely right, yes I need that!”. Would this actually happen? Not likely but imagining that that’s their response will give you the boost of confidence you need to neglect any other possible outcome and focus on what you want to gain most.

Don’t hold your app back because you’re afraid it will fail

The last thought I’ll leave you with is something I hear quite often in the first conversation with my clients and it goes something like this:

– Me: How big is your target market?

– Client: There are a hundred thousand business in Australia that can use my app, I want only 10% of those

The reason people say this is the title of this article, they’re afraid if they aim too high they’ll lose, but if they aim low enough they’ll make it.

The problem here is they have already lost 90% of their market, by not aiming high enough you’re already losing what you’re not aiming at.

Put room for failures in your business, they are bound to happen and they will happen but never aim for less than the best possible outcome!