Failure Junkies

How often do you come SO CLOSE to what you want to accomplish... only to let it slip away?

Not that you meant to fail. You just didn't plan properly. Or you forgot an element of the process. Or you misunderstood the directions. Or you overslept.

If this happens to you once or twice, it's an aberration. If it happens enough that it becomes synonymous with your personality, it's a problem.

Some people might call this kind of chronic shortfall "self-sabotage" -- a fear of success. I'd counter that argument: it's not fear of success that sends people stumbling en route to the finish line; it's complacency with failure.

Simply put, if you fail often enough, you learn how to do it really well. You subconsciously understand how NOT to get the job done. And that kind of perpetual second (or third, or thirtieth) place finish becomes a bizarre version of a safety blanket.

Once you learn how to handle failure, you realize it's not so bad. Once you fail enough, you realize it might not even matter.

Sure, you're not planning to fail, but you're not necessarily concerned about winning either. Because you know failing won't kill you, and -- in a best case scenario -- it might even allow you to prolong your current lifestyle, which you've become accustomed to.

In short, you've become a failure junkie.

I understand this kind of behavior because I live it more often than I'd like to admit. Odds are, so do you.

So, what do we do about it?

The first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem...