I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot.
Why? Because when you think about the consequences, you always think of a
negative result.
Some people get frozen by the fear of failure. They get it from peers or from just thinking
about the possibility of negative results. They might be afraid of looking bad
or being embarrassed. I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in
life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't
believe you can achieve anything by being passive. I'm not thinking about
anything except what I'm trying to accomplish. Any fear is an illusion. You
think something is standing in your way but nothing is really there. What is there is an opportunity to do your
best and gain some success. If it turns out my best isn't good enough, then at
least I'll never be able to look back and say I was too afraid to try. Failure
always made me try harder the next time.
That's why my advice
has always been to "think positive" and find fuel in any
failure. Sometimes failure actually just gets you closer to where you want to be. If I'm trying to fix a car, every
time I try something that doesn't work, I'm getting closer to finding the
answer. The greatest inventions in the world had hundreds of failures before the answers were found.
I think fear
sometimes comes from a lack of focus or concentration. If I had stood at the
free-throw line and thought about 10 million people watching me on the other
side of the camera lens, I couldn't have made anything. So I mentally tried to
put myself in a familiar place. I thought about all those times I shot free
throws in practice and went through the same motion, the same technique that I
had used thousands of times. You forget about the outcome. You know you are
doing the right things. So you relax and perform. After that you can't control
anything anyway. It's out of your hands, so don't worry about it.