Failure scares people. Rejection can be a painful experience. Many people are more scared to give a speech in front of their peers than they are of death itself. It seems ridiculous, but the reality is that for many many people, the anxiety associated with failure crippling.

The flipside (the Truth) is, if you embrace failure as something inevitable and natural, something that’s bound to happen, it actually becomes a good thing. Failing gets your mistakes out of the way and makes room for improvement. In sales, getting nine “No’s” out of ten gets you closer to hearing the “Yes” you’ve waited for. Along the way you’ll learn what circumstances and skills help attain success.

When I fear failure, I ask myself:

a.) Will anyone get severely injured or die if I make this mistake? No.
b.) If Earth were to explode tomorrow, would I really see Angelina Jolie or just a regular person?

Extreme? Yes. Effective? Very. It checks my state of mind, fast.

Athletes combat their fear every time they step out on the court. The enormous weight of public pressure doesn’t keep them from playing; they know that each game someone has to lose. They don’t sit on the bench each time they feel a pang of fear.

Bill Gates faced an enormous amount of rejection to get Microsoft to it’s height today. Each “No” he received improved his product and brought him closer to achieving the high standard and success we associate with Microsoft.

It takes a lot of experience to meet failure with courage. Why not get started and quickly get the pesky rejections out of the way?

In tennis, No-man’s land is not where you want to be. The space between the baseline and volley line, it’s where you’ll likely hit the least shots.

The problem with no-man’s land is that you reach too far to hit long balls and too far to hit short balls. The middle is not an advantageous position as you flail and stretch for balls that soar past you or one’s that are just shy of your grasp. You feel breathless and mixed-up.

The name itself sounds lonely and desperate, like a desert where you go to die.

When I played tennis I didn’t understand this concept. I thought the middle was the nicest, most effective place to be. Shouldn’t it make it easier to hit both long and short balls from the center? A natural hitter, I thought that positioning myself in the prime real estate nobody else wanted was an advantage.

At my coach’s behest, I consciously tried to avoid no-man’s land, but it felt like the smart place to be to prepare for whatever came in.

Pretty quickly, my tennis started to suck. I flailed around and ran speedily back to reach long balls and back as fast as I could to reach short ones. I was a chicken with my head cut off and the courts filled with little kids waiting to kick my ass. I saw that my techniques weren’t working and that perhaps heeding the advice that seemed counterintuitive to me would improve my game. I avoided no-man’s land at all costs.

I soon realized that I loved no-man’s land not because it mentally prepared to hit better, but because it didn’t force me to make a decision. The middle was safe place to be, and I didn’t have to choose my positioning based on what came in. I just hit whatever came in.

Tennis is a split-second sport. Michael Chang is intense and his feet move fast. He anticipates and makes a decision even before his opponent serves up a ball. He wins. My indecision in no-man’s land weakened everything about my game. I saw that I was scared of making a wrong decision and failing, and knew that the middle didn’t give me nearly as much anxiety as hitting from the baseline or the volley line. It was there where I could miss a shot if I chose wrong.

Being pro-active improved my game, but I also realized that failing was inevitable at times. Sometimes I chose wrong and missed shots. But at least I chose. Staying in no-man’s land was a constant failure, and the alternative of making a decision but chancing a wrong move felt much better to me.

Sometimes the things that seem most natural or smart or intuitive for us are just rationalizations because we’re scared of the alternatives. I saw this clearly with my tennis game and realized I needed to anticipate, prepare, and make the decisions that are the hardest to make-Chang-style.