Fear of Failure can be one of the biggest hurdles to your success, potentially in all aspects of your life. It’s that heavy weight bearing down on you, thinking about what others may think of you, once you do, or achieve, a certain thing. This fear can be crippling, and may show itself in other ways, like procrastination.
Luckily, Fear of Failure, can be overcome. So lets see how.
Fear of Failure and Perception
We have looked at emotions, how thoughts can trigger emotions, and how emotions can trigger thoughts. The thoughts could be incorrect, and the emotions may be irrational.
So the first step in overcoming this fear is to realise this one, simple fact:
- People are thinking about themselves 99.999% of the time!
And if that’s the case, then:
- They aren’t taking notice of you, and
- Even if they are, are they even bothered tracking your progress on the thing you are doing?
In the extremely rare case they are, then
- More than likely they will be happy with what you are doing – even if they react at all!
Once you are aware of the true nature of the situation, that is, most people aren’t looking, don’t know, don’t care, and wont react, clarifies the reality of the situation.
This realisation allows you to adjust your perception, and with a bit of self awareness, and emotional intelligence, allows you to recognise and correct those thoughts and feelings.
Actually Failing
But what happens if you do actually fail?
Firstly, remember the above, more than likely nobody noticed, and if they did, probably didn’t react.
I’m going to let you into a secret, listen closely, everyone makes mistakes, everyone fails in their life. Its part of life and the human condition. So be gentile on yourself, acknowledge and accept that you failed then work out what went wrong, how, why etc, and try again.
My Grandfather used to say “Show me someone that never made a mistake in their life and I will show you someone that has never worked in their life!”
So mistakes and failures are part of life. Accepting and dealing with failure is the best way of moving forward – remember to be gentile on yourself.
Embrace Failure – Everyone Fails – Learn from it and Push Forward!
