My 20-year long career in Italian 🇮🇹interpreting and translating has opened doors to many interesting and famous people, from film stars to world leaders to religious deities.
It has certainly not all been standard corporate work.
➡️I always feel so fortunate to have such a varied profession in which I am always discovering new industries, people and cultures, and can continue to grow and learn.
👂It’s important to remember, however, that to a large degree our growth is dependent on our (fear of) failure.
🥁I recently read this article by Sabina Nawaz published in the Harvard Business Review “To build new habits, get comfortable failing”. 👏
It is fascinating and reads so true. (Thank you 🙏Sabina!)
Sabina’s article has four main actions:
1. Immunise yourself to failure! Make yourself stronger by experiencing small fails – or even hearing the word “no” in numerous, but lesser ways. By receiving rejection and small failures over an extended period of time, the fear of failure is greatly decreased, enabling you to bounce back easily.
2. Externalise your commitment so you have some accountability, this way you are less likely to back out. For example, set up a meeting or just send an email to get the ball rolling on whatever is giving you the fear. This way you are removing the option of bailing – you have to tackle it.
3. Let others know what you have learned – be that either achievements or failures. You could set up a “lessons learned” folder, or even simply just write them down, but have them to hand so they are easily referred to when needed.
4. Keeping a track of your progress will enable you to see how far you have come, and, importantly, will enable you to stop when you have reached your peak.
➡️This is just a very short précis of Sabina’s article, and the #growthmindset is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but it is easy to forget that to effectively develop new skills we often need to fail at them first.
After all, how many times do babies fall on their bottoms before learning to walk? 👶
Make this the week to face your fear of failure, LinkedIn!
#success #learning #contentstrategy #personalbranding #blogging #translationservices