On Expecting Failure

I have discovered that I have a propensity to expect failure.

Mind you, this is not in and of itself a terrible thing.  Being willing to fail means that I have been able to try a wide number of activities.  Because doing anything new is, almost by default, admitting that you are going to fail - perhaps a great deal - before you succeed.

But there is also a down side to the propensity to expect failure - at some point, you begin to expect that everything will fail.  That is not a very helpful attitude when you trying to succeed at something, not very helpful at all.

So this is something I need to work at turning around.  Oddly enough, I think it largely comes down to personal pride and personal responsibility.

Personal Pride?  At some level, one has to start to want to not be known as the person who "fails" all the time.  One should, at least some of the time, want to be known as someone who succeeds at things, both for the personal benefit as as well as the fact that one can get things done.  If one gets things done, one can do other, more complex things.  Thus, I need to take some level of personal pride in being successful.

The other is personal responsibility - that is, that I am invested in what I am doing and the outcome of it.  That at some level, I need to make it happen because I am doing it and there is no-one else to make sure that it will succeed, and that in succeeding it will be good work.  And the work reflects me.

Maybe two other points:

1)  I seldom imagine what success will look like. What it feels like.  What it will be like after I do it.  I need to do that more.

2)  I need to, when appropriate, also get reminders of those successes.  For me, it tends to be redoing my swords at this point.  That is fine - but when I do and I look at the sword (or other item), it reminds me of the effort that went into it.