It seems that at the end of every year we tend to look at what we consider our failures and make resolutions to do better in the New Year. We have got ourselves caught in a performance trap, we have believed a lie. “I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself”. Because of past failures to meet our expectations of ourselves, or those others have burdened us with, we label ourselves as a failure. Fearing more failure we often stop trying or we take the other extreme and become almost addicted to our day timers. Goal accomplishment and using our time efficiently becomes an intolerable burden, with always the fear of failing dogging our rush through life.

Fear of failure can effect us in many ways. We tend to fall into perfectionism, which is basically a barricade we put up to prevent us failing, but perfectionism tends to suffocate creativity and stifles the joy of living. Perfectionists can appear to others to have it all together, but really their compulsion comes for a desperate desire to avoid the low self-esteem they experience when they fail.

Some people who tasted failure persisted and ultimately succeeded. Walt Disney faced financial disaster several times and had a nervous breakdown before he succeeded. Enrico Caruso, one of the world’s greatest tenors, was advised by his voice teacher to quit singing because he failed to hit the high notes. Thomas Edison failed more than 6,000 times before he could get an electric light bulb to work, and when a child was labeled as stupid. Abraham Lincoln had many failures but became one of America’s most beloved presidents. Winston Churchill did not do well in school but became Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Closer to home one of my sons was labeled as retarded by his Grade 2 teacher, I remember the day he came home from school and asked me “Am I stupid Mom”. I had to intervene and remove him from that environment. l I took over his education myself and he is now highly successful in his chosen career. If we believe the lies that we have been told we need to face them straight on and refuse to believe them. When I was growing up I lived with an aunt for five years who believed criticism was the way to motivate, and would tell me how I was not as smart as her grand-daughter, or anyone else for that matter, how I would not succeed at anything. I survived that onslaught, and even as a young child would tell myself that she was wrong, I would not believe what she said. The fact that I could not read until I was almost 9 years old was not the defining factor of who I was, just a circumstance that could be overcome.

The only real failure is not to get up one more time when we get knocked down. In every failure there is always something to learn and sometimes failure can even open a door to something better.

So this year if you must make a resolution for the new year don’t base it on what you perceive as your failures of 2007 but on your dreams of success for the new year.