Students’ Speak: How students can overcome their fear of failure?

By: Anish Mohapatra

It’s very true that we are afraid of things about which we are not sure and this uncertainty leads to fear of loss or failure. In every stage of a student’s life, this phase is common. We should not be afraid of this so-called thing called fear as we should understand the fact that we either win or we learn from our mistakes. It’s never a failure.

As Thomas Alva Edison said we never fail, we find hundreds of ways to how a thing can’t be done. He found 10,000 ways of how a bulb can’t be made. It depends on individual to individual how he accepts the fear of failure.

In my case, there are several times I have failed but never gave up. This should be the spirit of each individual. Because life teaches us the tough things in a bitter way so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes again and again and move forward by learning from our mistakes.

We are not born genius but there is always a choice in our hands whether we want to stay the same way or want to grow by learning from our mistakes. You can always learn from the mistakes that you made in the previous exams. I won’t say that definitely we would be successful in our first attempt but I can say that the continuous persistence and the attitude of never giving up can take us a long way.

At the same time, you should have faith in yourself and believe that God is always with you. Whatever we do never go waste in our lifetime. We know that the things which we get by lots and lots of effort have a different taste than the things that we get easily. And it remains with us forever, this is applicable in every aspect of life.

Just have that child spirit of never giving up. If you observe small kids, they don’t easily give up on anything and they try their level best for each and everything that they do. Most importantly, they are not afraid of anything and if ever they fail, they don’t regret and quickly jump on to another thing.

Lastly, humans are social animals and they continuously learn things either by observing others or by their own past experience. Even a person as big as prime minister also keeps learning even at this stage of life by making mistakes. We should not be afraid of failure because the things that we don’t get in life are indicating that we should try very hard and come next time. Then it would not have an option but to bring success to us. Similarly, when you are preparing for management entrance exams like CAT, MAT or XAT just remember that you have invested your time, energy, emotion in one thing and it will definitely pay off at the right time. You just need to be patient enough to wait for your turn and never get tired by waiting.

About the Author:

Anish Mohapatra is pursuing her MBA from NIT, Rourkela.