Hajra Naz
Among plenty of people across the world, the fear of failure is a common thing. Regardless of age, fear has a common nature with its own positive and negative effects. Talking about the positive effects of failure is that it prepares you well and allows you to think a lot before taking any action. One of the notable effects of fear of failure is that it hinders you from actually doing things. It discourages you to take any risks. You lose the freedom and courage to find success in your personal, professional, and social life.
The fear of failure is not confined to any specific class or group of people, even the wealthiest people of all time have possessed failure in one form or another in their life. Whether the fear is personal, social, or professional; it is really hard to admit that you have a fear of failure. It is because a fear of failure is not a great sign. It denies you from expressing yourself and makes you lose faith in your abilities.
Even entrepreneurs go through the struggle of fearing failure. They feel scared of going out of their comfort zone. It is because the entrepreneurship journey is uncertain and things sometimes happen that you never even expect. But successful entrepreneurs are those who use failure to their advantage. Following are the few proven strategies that can help you in overcoming the fear.
Shift your goals:
When there is something to be learned, you actually never fail at anything. For this purpose, reframe your goals and learn something new. In this way, you will never technically fail because you will always be learning something. When you are learning new things, your experiments never turn into failures and there is always something to gain.
Imagine the challenges:
According to the study published in the journal of experimental social psychology, two groups of college students were asked to write about what lay in the store for the coming week. One of the groups was asked to imagine that their week would be great. The other group was asked to write down thoughts that came to their mind about the week. Students who were asked to imagine the week as great were less energized and went to accomplish less during the week as compared to the other group. This indicates that just positive thinking is not enough. You need to balance your positive thinking by visualizing the future obstacles and struggles that you may encounter.
Uncover the actual story:
When you fear failure, you always associate failure with a big story about yourself. So, when you feel very upset about a specific failure, ask yourself what lies below the exaggerated part. Once you know the actual story, see if you can re-write with a more positive response. The best response to a failure that is perceived by you should be addressed by asking yourself that
- What did you learn from the situation?
- How can you grow as a person from the experience?
- The three positive things you learned from a situation?
Surrender to the fear and feel it:
Fear paralyzes you because you don’t want to feel it. You keep running from it and fail to take any real action. Therefore, the next time when you yourself stressed out or afraid of something, sit quietly by yourself and take deep breaths. You can feel the tightness in your body upon confronting the feelings you have feared for so long. Keep a timer for two minutes and when the timer goes off, chances are those feelings will shift and you will feel much lighter in the end.
