Try, Try, Try Again

Failure. Ah yes, I’ve now said it, I’ve spoken it into existence, I’ve dared uttered the almost sacrilegious word. Indecisive people usually have one singular trait in common: the fear of failure. Whether it be on small scales like being afraid to try a new dish in fear you might not like it or being afraid to choose a different path because the probability of failure is high. Whether you are indecisive in life or not, this trait is pretty common amongst all people, no matter how much confidence in yourself you have.

I am writing to you right now two weeks exactly after taking my second LSAT and am waiting for the results that I will receive exactly a week from today. The first time I took the test, I had little confidence in myself but figured I had to do better than my first diagnostic so I wasn’t too worried. I studied for months and months and practiced. How could I fail? Maybe I even got a perfect score! Boy was I dead wrong. I cried and cried and felt that maybe being a lawyer wasn’t for me, that I should just give up on the dream all together. Maybe I was just too dumb to ever succeed on this test. And then one day I decided that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. I’ve worked hard every day over the last three and a half years of my college career to pursue this interest of mine.  I’m not an idiot, I know I’m not. But that doesn’t mean this test didn’t make me question myself and my career path. I took the test for the second time and in the midst of high anxiety about the results, several nervous breakdowns and many feelings of “I just can’t do this anymore” I wondered to myself “why not?” 

So, I failed, so I might fail again, so what? What is it that I am afraid of exactly? Eventually succeeding? Getting back on the horse? Billionaire Jack Ma got denied from Harvard ten times and was the only person out of 23 people to not get hired for a fast food job. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for lacking imagination. J.K. Rowling was denied by countless publishers. Failure is inevitable but the most successful people have failed on far greater a level then not doing great on their LSAT the first few tries.

 It took me a while to understand that everyone has natural abilities and sometimes when you try something new, those natural abilities might not help you at all. You have to develop new ones, or strengthen the ones you already have. Maybe you don’t have people cheering you on with every small step of success you achieve, but that doesn’t mean there’s people who want to see you fail. So relax, take a deep breath, and understand that you will fail, and you will fail again and again until one day when you get where you’re going you’ll look back and remember that you got back up on the horse and the fear of failure was just a hazy memory. And remember even baby steps move us forward.