@failure = {:number_one_reason => 'fear' }

For anyone who is confused about the title , ” All I am trying to say is FEAR is the number one reason for most of the failures”. The title is a ruby way of representing it considering @failure as an instance variable of  class called life.

I am sure many will argue, NOOOOOO fear is not the number one reason and all that ! I am quite happy with the way you think, keep thinking ! It’s a good habit to cultivate.Why do I feel fear is the number one reason for failure? I can explain that using the following real life scenario,

Goal: Drive Down approx. 2000 miles + over a period of 15 days ( a small south India tour) starting from Mumbai.

Plan: Get the car serviced ( It’s a German car, well engineered, have not given any problems so far in its 4 years of service, but you know leave nothing for a chance! Hence the expensive servicing)

All set to ride: Dreaming about driving down the winding roads of  western ghats in kerala, awesome express corridor from Bangalore to Kerala, and the  8 lane Pune - HYD express way. All this dreams got shattered ?? HOW?? Villain : My Sister.

She planted a sense of fear in to poor little wife’s brain :( . Now you may ask what the hell did she say? Only this much, this is all that she said “ It’s raining heavily , driving down all the way from Mumbai??? Don’t you think it’s risky? Rest I think readers can imagine! On point blank road trip cancelled, train ticket is ready and my journey transcended into a meagre 24hr + train ride with no fun or adventure for that matter.

This is exactly how most people’s dreams/ goals get shattered or diverted. Fear of failure, fear of not completing a particular task and many other fascinating types of fear’s. Why can’t we keep an open mind, smile at the challenges and move forward? Don’t you think it will be very interesting to explore an untraveled route? learn something new on the way and reach the destination as an achiever? If Tenzing/Hillary was so afraid to take risks they wouldn’t have climbed mount everest. If “Elon Musk”, was afraid to take the risk of competing against big boys like Boeing, NASA and LockheedMartin, SpaceX wouldn’t have become a reality.We are trying to act like Risk professionals in investment banks, although they know that there is no way they can control the risks of any investments in markets they still keep coming up with complex mathematical formulae’s to solve situations.

To learn something new, to evolve and to understand, you have to take risks and enjoy the fruits of it either in the form of failure or success. My journey could have had many troubles, it’s not a small amount of distance that I was planning to cover. Tyre’s could have gone flat, it could have busted off, car could skid off, I could meet with accident the possibilities are enormous.May be nothing would have happened, and I would have happily ridden all around south India in this beautiful monsoon season. A small fear factor from one of the family member spoiled all of it. What happened here ? Nothing other than trashing a goal, diverting your attention,loosing focus and then the failure of your project.Fear can make you do things that are mediocre and it will curtail your ability to think freely and take good decisions. No one has achieved anything in life by being afraid, you got to stand up face your fears, challenge it and just beyond that brick wall lies your success.

This is a pattern which we can see on a daily basis. What we can learn from it? It’s not just an individual’s decision, if you are a team everyone’s thought matters. A team is like a family, one person goes off track whole project gets diverted/may be even killed. So, it is important while building an organization to bring in employees who are fearless and skilled.Because, there is no such thing as assured success, it’s all a game of probability (50-50). No matter what, you will learn a lot in that journey!

BE FEARLESS, LEARN AND EXPLORE ! There is plenty to see and learn from this world!