...even if you could fail?

According to my Facebook Memories, today marks my seven year anniversary of being a soap maker. My friend Rachel taught me. I drove to her house about two hours away, spent some time with her family, and we made soap while her daughter was napping. I had wanted to learn soap making for years, as I'd already been buying it from the Saturday Morning Market in St. Petersburg and LOVED it--but not the $5 price tag.

Her mini soap lesson ignited a passion I didn't even know I had. It also leveraged financial resources I would later need to support my son and me in our daily lives. wow, just from taking the plunge to learn something that was both new and terrifying to me.

There is a saying that goes, "what would you do if you knew you would not fail?" But I want to mix it up and say, "what would you do EVEN if you knew you *could* fail, but did not care?"

Failure is part of life. That soap making adventure could have ended up a miserable failure for me. But I didn't care. I had someone to help me and show me along the way. I called her several times before soaping on my own. I no longer cared if I failed and the soaping soared as a result!

We have this fear of failure and it often immobilizes us entirely. Why? Does failure not still teach us something? Does it not get us closer to success? Think of all the wonderful inventions we have in life, I imagine there were plenty of failures along their journey as well.

So today consider this: What would you do, even if you knew you could fail ? And what is preventing you from doing it?