Overcoming a Fear of Failure

How many times have you not taken action because you are afraid that you might not get it right? That fear of failure?

Do you keep putting things off because you need more information or whatever you are doing needs a little more work?

Do you always want to be perfect at what you are about to do even though you’ve never done it before?

And then bottled out at the last minute for fear of looking foolish?

Or that you might make a mistake?

Sound familiar? It certainly does for me.

Does the Fear of Failure Stop you Doing Things?

I always wanted to be the best at everything I decided to do.

The problem was that for many years I stopped myself from taking opportunities because I didn’t want to fail, didn’t feel quite ready.

My fear of failure would take over and I would bottle out. I wouldn’t put myself forward in case someone laughed at me.

Of course, now I realise that by doing that I wasn’t learning and growing.

I was devastated that I had stopped myself from learning from experience.

It’s OK to Make Mistakes

When I started my initial learning and training to do what I do today (that seems so long ago now!)

I began to realise that it’s OK to make mistakes and that in fact if you are not making mistakes you are not living your life to its full potential.

It’s when we make mistakes that we learn the most.

Think back over your life to the times when you grew and developed most as a person. I

am sure that it will be the times when things were not going as well as you would like, the failures, the challenging times.

So give yourself permission to make loads of mistakes so that you can learn and grow.

Remove Fear of Failure from your Vocabulary

In fact I recommend you remove the word failure from your vocabulary.

Ok so it didn’t quite turn out how you wanted, that’s ok.

I like to think there is no failure only results and feedback.

Maybe the result is a message that you need to change direction or try a different approach. So learn from what happened and move on.

It’s much more fun than living life not taking action because you might fail.

There’s no fun in that, trust me.

Overcome Your Fear of Failure by taking action today and see what happens.

Whatever you do, enjoy the results!