The thought of failure is a big part of why most fail in the first place. My resume will never be chosen over the others. I’m not good enough to ask her out on a date. I’ll never be able to beat expert mode on Guitar Hero 3. No matter how big or small the thought is it still affects the outcome of the situation to have those negative thoughts running through the back of your mind. Most of those thoughts lead to not even attempting to go after what you want or need.

Another suspect in the lineup of failure is other people’s negative comments towards your situation. Whether it be friends, family, or complete strangers they all can have a big impact on your mental state when it comes to attempting to succeed at your task. Knowing that this is a big factor in dealing with failure, I’m going to go ahead and list some of the things you can do instead of waiting for the dozens of e-mails asking me why I didn’t include it in the article. There are several ways you can attack other people’s negativity. I personally use a combination of two that I like to use in this situation. The first being turn their comments into a joke so that it can not only lighten them up but also make myself laugh relieving some of the stress and any fear I may have. The second option is to allow it to be mental fuel for my ambition. Take everything that they say and just store it and let it drive me into wanting my goal more and more.

Seeing past failure is difficult for some. Getting support from friends or family can help, but until you can stand on your own and face failure and overcome it by yourself, you won’t be fully rid of the fear of failure. Just about anything positive can be the key for you to surpass this obstacle. Tamper with your situation and apply new techniques until you find one that fits you personally.

Everyone has examples of things that looked like certain failure at first glance, but in the end has been complete success. Personally I have this website and even with the few articles I have posted up thus far, I have gotten tons of e-mails dealing with feedback for my work, questions visitors have, etc. The site still isn’t even finished yet and that feel of early success is just great. So please if anyone has anything to say please visit the forums (when they’re up that is) or send me an e-mail at jimmy@jimmylofton.com. My second major goal I’m going after is a full length cartoon that will be broadcasted on the internet only. Currently I have 12 episodes planned, the entire first season. I’ll be posting some updates as soon as I can get some further work done on that as well.

I hope this short article will inspire some of you to look past failure and build up the courage inside of you to press forward in your lives. Thank you Amanda K. for the e-mail which brought me to the subject of getting past the fear of failure. I hope it was helpful to you as well as others.

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Let’s face it, we all get bored.  When one gets bored it tends to lead to thinking about past, present, and the future.  Sounds great reading it, but the fact of the matter is that negative thoughts constantly enter into the mind while sitting around bored.  What am I going to do about my bills?  Why is my spouse out so late, did he/she lie about where he/she was going?  I can sit here and list dozens of negative thoughts that could enter into your mind at this point in time.  Be honest with yourself, you need a hobby. 

Hobbies are not only mentally relaxing, but a good way to relieve daily stress caused by your daily life.  Personally I have two hobbies that I involve myself on almost a daily basis.  One being video games, I mostly play the xbox 360.  The second hobby would be personal growth/development (and by the way thank all of you thats been clicking on the google ads!)  With this website as a hobby I not only get the chance to help others, but I also have the chance to help myself grow as a person.  Having a hobby that your really interested in is almost like having a therapeutic massage each and every day.  Not only will have another positive activity to look forward to in your life, but you will also have the calming and cheerful memories of the previous interactions with your hobby.  All of these positive things adds up in your life and shows in your personal life as well as your professional life.  You may notice yourself more cheerful at work and even to complete strangers. 

When some think of hobbies they instantly think of just the generic hobbies.  By generic hobbies I mean the most widely known hobbies out there such as collecting items or video games.  While that works just as good, there are other activities you can do that could be considered a hobby if implemented into your life correctly.  Several daily activities could even be considered a hobby if done correctly.  Driving back and forth to work can seem like work itself at times.  However, after you get home and take a shower to freshen up, jump right back in your car.  Turn on your choice of music and just drive off in no particular direction, even get lost if thats what it takes.  Several friends and complete strangers have walked up to me and told me how effective driving as a hobby has been in their lives and a couple even sat me down to tell me about the impact it has had in their personal/professional lives.  One gentlement in particular I can remember clearly as he stated “I can sit down to dinner and actually appreciate the crap my wife cooks for dinner after a relieving drive.”  There are several other activities you can take on as hobbies including:

• Broadening your music appreciation.  Sit down and relax while listening to genres you normally wouldn’t listen to.
• Read a chapter a day in a book.  I personally recommend Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton as it is a fantastic read.
• Creating a game night for either your family or your friends.  Thursday night poker can do wonders.
• Ride a bike or take a walk.
• Play with the family pet for 30 minutes to an hour a day.  The pet will love the added attention as will you from your pet.

There are plenty more activities you can pick up and turn into hobbies as long as you effectively implement them into your life.  If you already play with your family pet for 15 minutes a day, adding an extra 15 may not help you when it comes to relieving your stress and mentally calming down.  This would be an example of incorrectly implementing the activity as a hobby.  If you feel as if you need a hobby, don’t take something you already do because you will more than likely still feel empty in that department.  Instead try to explore other activities you may not even know you would be interested in.  Give the new activity a thirty to fourty-five day trial so you can effectively weigh out the results to see whether or not the activity is something you would be interested in implementing as a hobby. 

A few years ago my only real hobby was video games at the time.  Just sitting back and playing games after a long day did it for me for quite a while.  However, before you know it I was so into games that it began to feel like gaming was causing more problems in my life than it was solving.  I had let the amount of time I spent playing games daily become longer and longer to the point where I didn’t appreciate the purpose I originally had when I started playing video games.  I thought long and hard on the situation and figured I needed a second hobby.  I took some trials of other hobbies, but none struck my interest until stumbling upon personal development.  I was able to effectively implement the new hobby into my life.  Before I realized it, doing so took time away from my gaming hobby and corrected what was wrong with it and turned gaming back into an enjoyable, healthy hobby once more.  Point to my story is that you have to tamper with the situations in order to fit your life.  Three months down the road they might not work like the way they use to and may require some tampering to get them back on track.  Everyone leads different lives and lives do change over time.  If you need any help at all don’t hesitate to sign in to the forums and ask away.

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