If fear of failing is stopping you in your tracks and holding you back from the life you deserve, then here are 4 steps that can help you to beat the fear of failure and step into success.
Acknowledge your fear
You can’t change what you don’t recognise. What is it that you fear? Are you afraid of getting it wrong? Are you afraid of what other people may think or say about you? Are you scared of being laughed at, rejected or criticised? What is it that you’re afraid of?
Take a small step now
The best way to overcome any fear is to take action. It doesn’t have to be a huge step, a small one will do just fine. Perhaps you can just take the first small step or two now? It’s about dipping your toe into the water, not diving in the deep end.
Starting in this way can be enough to slide you in gently and get you going. And more importantly, once you have a small success in your pocket it can give you the confidence to continue forward – just one step at a time. So what one small step can you take today?
Expect failure along the way
As I said earlier, failure is part of life. If you are taking action, doing things and working towards your goals and dreams (whether at work or personally) you will fail – often.
If you expect failure and are prepared for it to happen, you will be far less surprised and shaken when it does occur. Anticipating that things may go wrong is not the same as setting yourself up for failure – it just means that you won’t get caught out when it does happen.
Not only that, but if you plan for failure before it happens guess what that’s called? Contingency plans. So think ahead to what might go wrong and what you could do if it did go wrong. Have a Plan B and possibly even a Plan C in place as alternatives in case you need them.
Redefine success
We all want to be successful, but have you ever stopped to consider what ‘success’ means for you?
For some it’s making as much money as possible. For others it’s about having a good balance of work and fun or a diary full of clients and business meetings. And for others still it might be about meaningful work or giving back to the community or being part of something bigger than just themselves.
So what does ‘success’ mean for you?
Don’t try to be perfect.
The quickest way to feel like a failure is to try to be perfect. Guess what? It isn’t possible – you’re human and you make mistakes. You will never be perfect or achieve perfection in anything that you do – it’s not going to happen, no matter what. So do your best, learn from your mistakes and do better next time. That’s all you can do.
There are many roads to success and many measurements of success. They are as individual as each of us. Stop thinking that success means getting it right every time and that if it didn’t turn out as planned it’s a failure.
Each result is successful in its own strange way. Even if you didn’t get the outcome you expected, if you had fun along the way, then isn’t that a success? If you learned something during the experience, isn’t that a success? And if you tried new things and expanded your horizons, isn’t that a success?
The meanings of success and failure are entirely up to you. But I believe that the only way to really fail is to give up and quit or not learn something from the situation or experience.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Very true! Makes a change to see smoeone spell it out like that.
Now I’m like, well duh! Truly tahnfkul for your help.
Kudos to you! I hadn’t tuhgoht of that!