Let’s get down to basics. If you haven’t been able to start something of your own, create your own asset for for generating income, then you most likely haven’t conquered the one thing that stands in your way: fear of failure.
Felix Dennis, one of Britain’s wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs, said: “After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth.”
As Dennis says, no book, including his, can devise a way to set you free. It’s really all up to you.
In his book “How to Get Rich” Dennis offers a list that before anyone gets started, they should carefully consider. His advice was that if you find yourself unable to measure up to even one of these initial demands then his suggestion was that you close his book and give it to a friend.
– If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand very little chance of ever getting rich.
– If you care what the neighbours think, you will never get rich.
– If you cannot bear the thought of causing worry to your family, spouse or lover while you plough a lonely, dangerous road rather than taking the safe option of a regular job, you will never get rich.
– If you have artistic inclinations and fear that the search for wealth will coarsen such talents or will degrade them, you will never get rich. (Because your fear, in this instance, is well justified.)
– If you are not prepared to work longer hours than almost anyone you know, despite the jibes of colleagues and friends, you are unlikely to get rich.
– If you cannot convince yourself that you are “good enough” to be rich, you will never get rich.
– If you cannot treat your quest to get rich as a game, you will never be rich.
– If you cannot face up to your fear of failure, you will never be rich.”
Dennis says you either get over it, go round it, go at it, mount it, duck under it or cosy up to it. “But you cannot surrender to it. That way lies paralysis, equivocation, ignomity and defeat.”
If you can overcome the power of fear of failure, you will have the opportunity to increase your confidence and put yourself into a small number of people who have conquered the single biggest obstacle to accumulating wealth. If you believe you have overcome your fear of failure and have the confidence to move forward with your life, then your next step is to look for and create income opportunities. Start by having the courage to take the first step by getting hold of a copy of “Breakthrough Ideas”.
