A Phoenix is a mythical bird that never dies. When it is time to die, it bursts into flame and is reborn as a baby from the ashes. And this is an eternal cycle. Dumbledore has a phoenix named Fawkes in the Harry Potter series.

Believe it or not, we can live the life of a phoenix. More importantly, we ought to.

Have you ever wanted to do something and then decided to play it safe and not do it instead? It could be anything from posting your thoughts on your blog or your Facebook to quitting your job and starting up or traveling the world.

We all have.

When you strip it to the barest fundamentals, the reason is always a fear of embarrassment. It is not failure that we fear. But how the people around us, our friends, will perceive us if we fail. So, we don't take the leap. And we play it safe. We don't go after our dreams. We tolerate things we don't have to tolerate. All because of a fear of failure, which is really a fear of being embarrassed in front of the people we know.

So, how to be a phoenix?

Lose your friends. All of them. And start over. Like a baby phoenix.

When you don't have any friends, the fear of failure goes away. Because, now there is nobody to be embarrassed in front of. We don't care about being embarrassed in front of strangers. Because, we can shrug our shoulders and move on. We will never see them again, right? But that isn't the case with friends. We want to uphold a certain status with our friends and acquaintances.

So lose them. All of them. And then take the leap.

This doesn't mean you will succeed. But your fear of failure comes down 100x. And that makes all the difference. When you aren't busy worrying about not failing, you will go on and do things that will let you succeed.

Ayn Rand once said, "Avoiding death is not the same as achieving life."

Irrespective of whether you succeed or fail at what you do, you will make new friends along the way. If you're lucky, you will even make the same friends again. The ones that you let go earlier on. This has happened to me.

And then when it is time to die again and take a new leap, you repeat all over again.

And that is how to be a phoenix.