Failure leads to Freedom
We prefer just about anything to falling or changing. We like things to stay the same; any difference from what I currently know becomes a cause for concern precisely because I don’t know what to do with the new situation or information; it is different from what I have already accepted as valid. If the new input is too different, it is downright threatening. We seek the status quo, even if it is not working for us at all. Limited to its view of the world, ego (preconditioned mind) attaches to the past and makes it present and projects into the future, interfering with that reality.
Why don't we risk thinking or doing things in new ways?
Because we are afraid of the unknown and fearful of failing, however, to change our situation or understanding, we have to try new things or leave the familiar behind, or as Joseph Campbell says in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, "we have to leave home".
Failure is the way
How do we learn to ride a bike? We get on and fall off repeatedly (fail) until we don’t. We learn not to fall, eventually – as long as we keep trying. Richard Rohr puts it this way “you learn how to recover from falling by falling! It is precisely by falling off the bike many times that you eventually learn what the balance feels like.” He also makes the interesting observation that “people who have never allowed themselves to fall are actually off balance, while not realising it at all.”
Failure and its discomfort force us to look outside what we know and try new things; that is, we expand our horizons and take in new data that becomes the basis of change and growth.
If I stick with what I know for fear of failure and the associated triggered anxiety and low self-worth, I am, in effect, stuck. My worldview is limited to what I know, and I am opposed to anything else, as it represents a source of discomfort. Inner freedom is lost; life is limited.
Freedom is overcoming failure to change and respond based on how life is; to be able to step into life and continually do so. Fear of failure will inevitably leave you stagnant, disappointed and depressed – too high a price.