Fear of Failure: How to End It NowSýnishorn

For far too long, I let the world determine my definition of success. So if I didn’t measure up to what the world’s standard is, then I felt like a failure. But that is not how God views things. 

I had to change how I perceived failure. I previously thought of it as being black or white. I assumed that you either failed or succeeded and that there wasn’t anything in between. 

In my head, I had determined a number, based on opinions of others around me, that made me feel like I was succeeding. I love seeing quantitative results. God made me that way! So that in itself wasn’t wrong. But you see, I had a number for everything. People who visited our website, took our courses, testimonials, revenue - you name it, I attached a number to it. And if those numbers weren’t where I thought they should be, I felt like I had failed. 

I struggled with this for years. I knew in my head that it wasn’t true, but I had no idea how to switch it. Then one day, while interviewing author Mark Batterson, he explained how he stopped measuring success by the number of books he sells. He instead began praying that God would put his books in the hands of the right people at the right time. Then, every book sale now became an answer to prayer. With this significance attached to each prayer answered (book sold) the numbers no longer mattered like they used to.

And for me, this helped me realize that even if there is just one person divinely connected to our message, then it is a success. 

Jesus would leave the 99 to find the 1 lost sheep every time. And if His effort is worth it, ours certainly is too.