Written by: Rodolfo Parlati, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The fear of failure is an inevitable feeling that we all have experienced at least once in our lives. Because of this fear, we tend to avoid dramatic situations, distancing ourselves more and more from our projects and dreams. A feeling of failure and frustration seems to pervade us continuously.
The fear of failure often becomes the cause of your failures because it blocks you and deeply conditions your decisions. The most serious mistake that people often make is to doubt their abilities. They ask themselves if they can win against the challenges that life presents them, and they believe that there is no escape from this vicious circle that seems to feed itself.
Instead, most times, adversity is necessary to succeed! Life is a constant challenge: facing risks and even failures is part of the game. How boring would be an existence with no ambitions, news, or obstacles? Try to imagine!
Here are typical symptoms of the fear of failure:
Avoiding challenging tasks
Procrastinating
Continuously worrying about the opinion of others
Conviction of not being good enough
Being pessimistic
Nurturing a constant feeling of humiliation
Having difficulty in taking any kind of responsibility
Rejecting the opportunities that arise
Feeling lost and trapped in daily comfort
Cheating
To overcome the fear of failure, you need to be determined, focused, and persistent. It is not failure itself that individuals fear. Rather it is the perceived negative consequences that follow it that worry and stress them.
These are the main negative consequences of failure perceived by people:
Loss of self-esteem
Feeling ashamed and embarrassed
Disinterest by the people considered important
Distorted perception of your self-effectiveness
Believing in an uncertain future
Disruption of the personal balance
How to overcome the fear of failure and learn to embrace it? Here are 7 powerful strategies.
Learn from mistakes.
Even the smallest of your goals brings with it the possibility of failure. You have no idea how many times people have failed in their career and personal life, but the only option they have is to get back up and go on. So, embrace failures and don't let them control your future. They are basic life lessons from which to learn and get value. When you focus on the action and avoid any kind of judgment or comparison with others, you increase your confidence, motivation, and performance and reduce anxiety.
Do not stick your head in the sand, and address the problem.
People usually tend to deal with difficult situations in three main ways: they avoid them, interpret them emotionally, or deal with them. If a stressful situation worries you, you can choose to:
Avoid it as much as possible
Convince yourself and accept it
Face it and try to solve it
By following one of the first two choices, handling the situation only provides short-term relief and gives the illusion to have solved the problem somehow, while it has been got around. Instead, if you want long-term benefits, you should opt for the third choice, and focus on solving the situation, even if it worries you, and find out how you can make it better.
Do not be ashamed.
The most common fear of failure that people experience is the fear of shame and humiliation. Everyone has felt this sensation at least once in life. This can lead people to limit their possibilities, block them in clearly wrong situations, and force them to pretend in front of others. For these people, failure is certainly seen as a shame. The key to overcoming this fear is to create an environment in which failure is not followed by laughter, mockery, and embarrassment. Instead, it is essential to believe in your ideas, carry them forward, take full responsibility for negative situations, and perceive mistakes as teaching.
Think positive and overcome your fears.
Are your fears truly rational and highly likely to come true? Think about it. Many people end up worrying about the worst-case scenario, often without logic. Thinking positively means setting your mindset always to see the sunlight. The fear of failure can be so powerful that it obscures your clarity of thought, and so you do nothing but only focus on possible negative results. By doing so, you get overwhelmed by anxiety and think about all the obstacles that stand in your way. Giving up becomes the only possible solution. What if you think about the successes you can achieve? How do you feel if you force yourself to be unstoppable and face any obstacle that comes your way? Thinking positively will open your mind to new perspectives that will allow you to find the strength and courage to face any challenge.
Focus on things that are under your control.
One of the reasons people are so nervous and stressed is that they focus on aspects or situations they cannot directly change or control. Instead, if you focus only on what you can control, you will soon experience a sense of trust and certainty. You can do this by avoiding focusing on the result, which you cannot control, and concentrating on the actions to take, your performance, to have a better chance to succeed.
Start small.
To avoid being overwhelmed by the fear of failure, a powerful strategy is to start by setting small goals to accomplish. Step by step, they will lead you towards your final destination.
Life is like a marathon. You. have to be calm and consistent to save energy throughout the whole race. By doing so, these small goals become the “stones” of motivation, self-esteem, strength, and ambition with which you’ll build your road towards success.
Get out of your “comfort zone.”
People are afraid of change. They want to know what will happen in their future, but this attitude leads them to remain stuck in a “limbo” where there is no progress and improvement. Magic happens when you finally get out of your “comfort zone” and find the courage to face your fears and insecurities. It’s also true that the chances of failing become higher, but this is the only way that lets you know yourself better and find out who you are by giving your inner potential a possibility to emerge significantly.
Each end is only a brand new beginning.
Whenever you fail to attempt, you need to analyze the various paths to reach your projects and dreams. Thus, a failure will be nothing more than a path you explored and from which you will learn that there is still something more to discover. In this way, you will not avoid continuing to walk, explore and struggle, but you will move forward because fear of failure will not arise.
In the end, it is said that “every end is only a brand new beginning,” and failures just signify the end of one thing and the start of something else.
Life will never stop surprising you and offering you opportunities as long as you are willing to continue walking and building your happiness and well-being.
Rodolfo Parlati, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rodolfo Parlati is a Professional Life & Executive Coach. Always inspired by the desire to impact others positively, his mission is to help people and professionals be happy and successful by finding out their inner potential and exploring the right path to follow to "give shape" to their goals. Passionate about building connections, the key elements of his coaching strategy are creating meaningful actions to attain the clients' goals, knowing what is holding them back, and supporting them in finding higher awareness. His natural curiosity has always driven him to be an eager lifelong learner, explore new fields, and look for the answers to any question.
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