Do you think you deserve to be financially free? Do you deserve to be wealthy? 

Upon reading those questions, you may have thought a resounding “Yes!” Others may still be pondering their answers. Some may feel they don’t, in fact, deserve to live life abundantly. 

Our identity forms our beliefs 

Being deserving is part of one’s identity. Some may feel guilty about having a lot of money, and others may feel their spiritual growth would be limited by financial success. Some believe that being financially free is one’s birthright, while others see wealth as evidence of oppression and that the scales of justice have been unfairly balanced from the get-go. 

When taking inventory of our lives, if we believe we deserve more, we can use that as an opportunity to ask another question: If I couldn’t fail, what would I do? 

If you believe you deserve financial freedom, yet, according to you, have not reached it, what do you think is in your way?

Rethinking Failure 

Sara Blakely, the founder and owner of Spanx and one of the youngest self-made billionaires in history, has adopted a worthy life philosophy: failure is not trying, regardless of the possible mistakes made along the way. 

She grew up with a father who would ask her at the end of each school week, “What did you fail at this week?” He would express disappointment when she didn’t have an answer. 

Wow! What a mindset!

Sara learned an important lesson from her father — life is not about always getting it right. It’s about becoming a better person by having the willingness to try. 

Fast-forward years later, Sara worked in door-to-door sales (selling fax machines, of all things!). She thought to herself — I know I’m good at selling, but I want to sell something I believe in. The idea for her shapewear came from cutting the feet out of her pantyhose to get the advantage of the control top. She took her prototype directly to Nieman Marcus. She knew she couldn’t fail because failing was not trying. 

To make a long story short, Niemans took her product on, and as they say — the rest is history. 

Are you failing, or are you trying? 

Imagine what would be possible with our world if we all embodied Sara’s philosophy — failure is not trying. How many more pieces of art would be created? How many more innovations produced? How much more financial freedom attained? How many more doors opened, and dreams could come true? 

I hope your answer to my first two questions in this article is “Yes!” And if your road to wealth is still being traversed, I hope it is embedded with a lot of trying, “mistakes,” and all. As Sara Blakely states: “It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.”