Of all the fears that exist, the fear of failure is probably one of the most influential in our minds, and one of those that destroys the most dreams and lives. There has surely been a time in your life when the fear of failure has prevented you from trying something new for fear of the unknown; of what people will say and of whether or not you will be able to achieve it. If so, don’t worry! Keep reading to understand why you feel that fear and how you can face it.
What is the fear of failure?
Fear is your brain’s response to a potential threat. This response is adaptive and often beneficial, as it keeps you alert to make the right decisions in a threatening situation. However, when you allow that feeling to take over you, it can prevent you from achieving your goals. , and that’s when it becomes a problem.
The fear of failure is a great barrier that stands between your goals and your desire to act to achieve them. It is that feeling that makes us believe that there are certain things that we cannot do and little by little we ourselves set limits that prevent us from flying, creating, dreaming and building the life we have always wanted.
The fear of failure ends up being a trick of the mind to keep you in your comfort zone. All human beings have doubts about the unknown and we are scared of the uncertainty of whether or not something will turn out the way we planned it in our heads.
This is something that usually overwhelms and worries us, so our mind will unconsciously find all the ways to make us avoid these situations, since it prefers to stay where it is (even if we are not happy and satisfied in that place) to feeling the uncertainty of a future that we do not know. Therefore, the fear of failure can also translate into fear of the unknown. , since the fact of not knowing whether we will be successful or not in what we want to achieve is what really scares us.
From this moment on, it is important for you to know that absolutely all human beings are afraid of failing and most likely you will never stop experiencing it because throughout your life you will face thousands of situations for the first time, which will require some effort on your part and the truth is that your mind does not like you to take on challenges.
That is why you often tend to delay the first steps that will allow you to achieve your goals, especially when what you want to achieve is something complicated that requires a lot of effort and courage on your part. This is where the famous excuses come into play, which we perceive as perfectly valid and true for not taking action.
But don’t worry! You are perfectly capable of overcoming it, and of not allowing it to limit you any longer. Fear can also be your great friend and ally when you face it in the right way.
The fear of failure tells you that you are about to do something really worthwhile!
Why are we afraid of failure?
The fear of failure is disguised as many other fears that have a much more important and significant weight than just making mistakes.
Your fear of failure may actually be a fear of success. . Let’s face it, success (whatever that means to you) is what we all aspire to, yet it can be intimidating.
Especially when you are a person who likes to go unnoticed and succeed, it becomes a fear of exposure or taking on great responsibilities. Likewise, if you do not have a well-developed self-esteem, you will most likely not feel worthy of being a successful person. , and you will unconsciously look for ways to self-sabotage so as not to achieve success.
Other important factors that influence why we feel fear of failure are: perfectionism and self-demand. These are accompanied by catastrophic thoughts that make you believe that if you don’t do things perfectly, it’s not worth trying. This may sound absurd because the chances of something turning out perfect on the first try are very low; If not zero.
That’s why it’s important to talk about how today’s society encourages perfection and self-demands, and how we’ve been taught since childhood that failure is something to be avoided at all costs. If you think about it, it’s likely that when you made a mistake as a child, you received scolding, complaints, hurtful comments and in some cases mockery, making you feel very ashamed.
And don’t believe it, those memories stay in your memory and every time you want to try something new in your adult life they can be making noise. . Nobody wants to feel ashamed, or rejected. Nobody wants to feel incapable or insignificant. Nobody wants to lose, or feel defeated. All of these are situations and emotions that are too unpleasant for us to avoid at all costs and that is what stops us!
How the fear of failure manifests itself
The fear of failure manifests itself in different ways:
- Doubts and insecurities such as: “I can’t, I’m not capable, I’m not going to achieve it, it’s too difficult, I’m a failure, I don’t know what I’m doing, no one is going to like this, I’m doing everything wrong, etc.”
- Excuses like: I’ll talk to him another day, I’m tired today, I’ll start tomorrow, I’m too old for that, I don’t feel like it today, I don’t know how to do it, etc.
- You stop doing things you used to do and avoid exposing yourself to new situations. Likewise, you avoid taking on responsibilities and new challenges.
- Your stress levels increase when you have a low level of self-efficacy, which is related to not feeling capable of achieving what you want.
- Self-sabotage: This happens when you don’t finish things, you put everything off until the last minute, you are a perfectionist, you don’t keep your promises, you find an excuse for everything, etc.
Strategies to deal with the fear of failure
Change your perspective on what you perceive as failure
In fact, failure is a crucial part of success and learning important lessons. So, it’s time to change perspective and see failure as an opportunity, not something to fear.
How do you view failure? Do you seek failure or avoid it? Oddly enough, failure and the way you relate to it will determine the level of success you achieve in life.
They say that mistakes are our friends, because we learn more from them than from achievements that did not require much effort. No one was born an expert in something, much less with their dreams or projects already materialized. Everything you are and what you have so far is the result of your learning experiences and without a doubt, the greatest learning comes from mistakes.
When you start seeing your failures as an inventory of experiences and as an opportunity to grow and learn, you will stop fearing them and start looking for them.
In reality, you only fail when you stop trying and when you are not aware of the lessons that failure left you. Remember, it is allowed to make mistakes! As long as you identify your mistakes and look for alternatives to avoid repeating them.
At the end of the day, if you think about it, the most important thing in a person’s life is their failures. In fact, they are much more important than their successes, because the main learnings and transformations are experienced by making mistakes and failing.
And it is precisely in those moments when you stumble that you must stop, change your perspective and try again with the wisdom and new strategies you have learned.
Likewise, making mistakes allows you to identify what it is you really want. To find out, you may have to try a few things and fail at them to realize that that was not your place.
If you haven’t failed at anything, it’s because you haven’t tried anything, and to be honest, that’s not the path to a full and meaningful life. Ask yourself, what experiences are you collecting?
Sometimes failure can mean “this isn’t for me” and other times it can mean “try again” and if you fail again, try again. Especially if you enjoy doing what you’re failing at, even if the outcome isn’t what you expected.
Remember, you are not failing, you are learning!
Identify which thoughts are holding you back
Identify your automatic thoughts associated with fear. These are usually phrases that appear in your mind and that you generally assume to be true.
Thoughts like: “you’re going to make mistakes, you’re not going to be able to, everything is going to go wrong, etc.” Or there are also the famous “what if…” and if it doesn’t work out for me, and if others don’t like me, and if I don’t get a single client, etc. And finally, we have the “if only…”, such as if I had the body, if I had the physique, if I had the postgraduate degree, if I had the money, if I had so-and-so’s opportunities , etc. These thoughts are called limiting beliefs and they should not be allowed into your mental space.
By believing these thoughts and giving them a chance, you automatically condition yourself to feel the heartbreaking emotion of failure before you even experience it. This will cause you to become blocked and, when you operate in that context, your qualities can play tricks on you.
It’s key here to trust your abilities and what you’ve done to get to where you are. Stop putting limits on yourself and putting yourself in a little box knowing that you can fly. Don’t let your thoughts paralyze you. Question them and put them to the test.
What is the reason you haven’t pursued the life of your dreams? What is holding you back? What are your excuses? What scares you? Is it failure or fear of what others will say, fear of not feeling enough, fear of not feeling capable, fear of losing money, fear of people moving away from you, etc.
Answer those questions thoroughly. and once you identify your excuses and fears, you will be able to easily recognize the automatic thoughts that your brain generates to prevent you from moving forward. The key is to ignore them and learn to live with them, without letting them paralyze you.
Change “I won’t make it” to “maybe I can,” and that’s when you’ll be opening the doors to your dreams.
Manage an attitude without expectations
Do your best! When you do something for the first time, it is wise to expect realistic results taking into account your preparation, your experience, your skills and your knowledge. No one is born knowing everything and as you progress and practice, you will acquire more knowledge and enough self-confidence to obtain better results.
Don’t run away from failure
If you run away from failure you are playing it too safe, you are not taking risks, you are staying in your comfort zone and not only that, by avoiding failure you are avoiding acquiring the tools to build your success .
This is quite a challenge because when we face the feeling of failure we believe that our efforts are useless and we give in to discouragement, convincing ourselves that it is not worth continuing to try. However, running away from failure and stopping trying is a form of self-sabotage.
That is why you should congratulate yourself for having the courage to leave your comfort zone and try something that is difficult and somewhat uncomfortable for you, and if for some reason things do not go well, remember that it is not a failure, it is a learning experience.
Seek to make mistakes, seek out new situations and challenge your fears.
Question what success is for you
You have surely heard interviews with great businessmen and athletes in which they claim that to get to where they are they had to fail thousands of times, this means that successful people are those who get back up after having had thousands of failures .
Similarly, if what you are afraid of is that your work will be rejected or not validated by others, it is important that you remember that things can only be judged by their creator, that is, we tend to do things with the idea that others will like our work or our projects, when in reality, if you do your best to do things well and you feel satisfied with your work, it does not matter how others receive it.
You are the only one who knows the effort you have put into building that project and you are the only one who can judge whether or not you did a good job. . Ultimately, you are the only one who can determine whether you are being successful or not, because as much as it costs you to hear it: you and your work are enough without the approval of others.
Another key aspect of redefining success and facing the fear of failure is to shift your focus from what you want out of doing to what you want out of doing. Simply put, focus on enjoying the progress and don’t rush to achieve the end results.
Sometimes we focus so much on results that we find it hard to appreciate progress and all the progress we have made, and at the end of the day, success is being aligned with what you are doing. So, if you are doing something you really enjoy, you are already being successful!
Forget the excuses
When the rewards and benefits of what we want to achieve are significant, important and exciting enough, your brain will imagine failure before you even try. It does this by making excuses.
Excuses are the way your mind camouflages your fear of failure. They justify your inaction and keep you in the same place, and the more you repeat this process of making excuses, the more you get used to regret, and you will inevitably start to carry your excuses to different areas of your life.
If you think about it, excuses are a very easy way to avoid leaving your comfort zone and, in the end, you get used to living with that bad feeling of having proven that you are not capable of taking action because you are believing your excuses, and this makes it increasingly difficult for you to act to change those aspects that you would like to work on.
Make a list of all the excuses that are holding you back and question them. Are you really not going to go to the gym because you’re lazy? Are you really not going to get out of bed because it’s cold? Are you really not going to start your business because of what people will say?
Make a plan and take action
Sometimes we want to jump in headfirst, without having planned the concrete and necessary actions to achieve what we want and of course, an action that is not directed towards what we want cannot lead to real progress.
Even the biggest goals can be broken down into small, tangible, actionable actions. Once you see these actions in front of you, you’ll have more courage to move forward, as what you once saw as something unknown now begins to become clearer.
The next step is to take action; here your willpower will be put to the test. But now that you are aware of the fear that is holding you back and, in addition, you have set several actions to follow, all of this will cost you less.
Challenge yourself and remember that moving forward when your mind is making too much noise will break a barrier within you that will make you a braver, more open and more confident person.
From now on, you have to break that barrier every time your fears and excuses take over you. Put yourself in situations that take you out of your comfort zone to face this fear and get used to breaking it every time you have the opportunity.
You will see how little by little you will take on bigger challenges that you would not have even dared to think about before. Look for situations that are a challenge for you, even if it is small, and that you know will require an effort on your part to test yourself and develop yourself and be aware of what is happening in your mind and transform fear into an opportunity to improve in that aspect that you want.
You don’t have to be great to act, but you do have to act to be great.
Conclusion
We’ve been taught to avoid failure at all costs. But what if we did the opposite? What if instead of avoiding failure, we embraced it and relied on fear and uncertainty to push ourselves out of our comfort zone?
It can be intimidating to take risks and put yourself out there, but sometimes challenging yourself is essential if you want to experience growth and success.
There you have it! You now know how you can make peace with your fear of failure and turn it into an ally instead of an enemy. Follow these strategies and face your fears
