It’s been about 18 years but I still remember the horror like it was yesterday.  A very shy 20 something, trying to work out how to use the photocopier.  Too afraid to fail at such a simple task.  Too afraid to ask for help.

With a climate conscious and high tech world the context may not be familiar but I bet the feeling is.  Fear.  Too afraid to try in case you fail.

Many of the young professionals I work with do often struggle with this challenge.  And here’s the life hack I tell them.  Failure? That’s where the real learning happens.  You just need to let go and try.

Why ‘trying’ is crucial to your career success:

1) When starting out in your career, you don’t have a whole host of experience to fall back on to show your ‘worth’.  But having the right attitude, enthusiasm and energy, will get you noticed.  Brilliant!  The ‘bad’ news is that means applying that energy to things you may not be overly familiar with, otherwise you’re just staying skill.  And this will absolutely get you noticed in all the right ways, even if you feel like things don’t actually go according to plan.

2) If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get the same results.  And that means if you try something new, you might just find a whole bundle of creative and imaginative ways to get things done.  And anything that breads innovation into you company, will help your career.

3) And that innovative approach will help you problem solve.  Whether you’re solving a pre-existing problem or one you’ve created through your approach to trying something new.  Because here is the thing.  When you try, it doesn’t always works out.  Maybe your brilliant way of running a project means it actually takes longer.  Maybe you stammer and stutter your way through that presentation.  But this isn’t school, you’re not trying to give the prefect answer to ace that exam.  Trying new things means either a great result or a chance to grow.  Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn.  And as long as you are learning, you’re making progress and figuring out how to do it better the next time.  Better than how you did it before.  Because when you’re not afraid to fail, all the challenges go away as you find that everything in figureoutable.