Failure wants to be your friend

Most people seem to have an innate fear of failure, but failure is really your best friend. People who succeed also fail a great deal because they make a lot of attempts. Those who have the most successes also have the most failures. There is nothing wrong or shameful in failing. The only regret lies in never making the attempt. So don't be afraid to experiment in your attempts to increase productivity.

Sometimes the quickest way to find out if something will work is to jump right in and do it. You can always make adjustments along the way. It's the ready-fire-aim approach, and surprisingly, it works a lot better than the more common ready-aim-fire approach. The reason is that after you've "fired" once, you have some actual data with which to adjust your aim. Too many people get bogged down in planning and thinking and never get to the point of action. How many potentially great ideas have you passed up because you got stuck in the state of analysis paralysis (i.e. ready-aim-aim-aim-aim-aim...)?

Understand that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is an essential part of success. Once you succeed, no one will remember your failures anyway. We have electric light bulbs because Thomas Edison refused to give up even after 10,000 failed experiments. If the word "failure" is anathema to you, then reframe it: You either succeed, or you have a learning experience.

Letting go of the fear of failure will serve you well. If you're excited about achieving a particular goal, but you're afraid you might not be able to pull it off, jump on it and do it anyway. Even if you fail in your attempt, you'll learn something valuable and can make a better attempt next time. If you look at people who are successful in business today, you will commonly see that many of them had a string of dismal failures before finally hitting on something that worked. And I think most of these people will agree that those early failure experiences were an essential contributing factor in their future successes.

My advice to anyone starting a new business is to begin pumping out products or devising services and don't worry much about whether they'll be hits. They probably won't be. But you'll learn a lot more by doing than you ever will by thinking.