It seemed simple to me, fear of failure was a huge roadblock to progress in key areas of life so until we can deal with that fear, we can’t come close to realizing our true potential and have to continually battle the frustration that goes with being held back.
But how do you overcome (or at least manage) fear of failure?
After all, we are talking about a paralyzing force here that directs ALL of its energy toward preventing us from taking action – a force that is so deeply embedded in our subconscious mind that we often have no idea how it comes to be.
Yet fearing failure cannot win…our happiness, health and professional/financial lives depend on learning to get past it.
I’ve been working hard over the last couple of years to try and manage emotion from big decisions and daily behaviors.
Notice I didn’t say eliminate since burying your emotions or pretending they do not exist are both as unhealthy as letting them control you.
The key to managing feelings of fear though is to understand that 99% of the time we completely overestimate (to the point of fabrication) the negative consequences of any decision or action.
In other words, it’s all about the worst possible outcome we can imagine instead of looking at the more likely, less negative outcome.
It’s not that we want to pretend that only the best will happen, we are not talking about living in a fantasy world, but we are also not talking about living in the worst possible situation either.
Instead of giving in to fear, try instead to write down the positives and negatives, what you believe your chances are of succeeding, what would improve your chances and what the most likely outcome will be (not the worst possible outcome which is where our minds typically dwell)
I find that meditation, yoga, deep breathing and other mind-calming activities can help tremendously by recognizing and then calming the emotional reaction to decisions allowing you be more objective about the outcome.
Suddenly, you begin to clearly see the real likely outcome of your actions and can quickly determine if you should continue and how to improve your odds of achieving the outcome you desire without being paralyzed by emotion.
The entire exercise of yoga or meditation (if it’s done correctly) helps train you to remove the emotional reaction to things from the things themselves which helps tremendously when fear, frustration, anger, etc…tend to take over.
Stop being a victim to fear of failure, learn to be comfortable in proceeding with key life actions and watch your results soar.
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