4 Ways to Overcome your Fear of Failure Blog

One of the greatest obstacles to your success is your fear of failure.  There is something about stepping into the unknown that paralyses us with fear.  Many super successful business people have said one of the biggest secrets to their success is learning how to move forward through their fear. 

Are you stopping yourself being successful by being paralysed by fear?  You might not even realise you are doing some of these things.  

Signs of Fear of Failure

If you have a fear of failure, you might do the following things: 

• Procrastinate starting a task - this is something I had to overcome as I found whenever I needed to do something that pushed me out of my comfort zone, I always found myself hanging out in Facebook pretending to be busy.  Can you relate? 
• Fearful of trying something new -  A lot of people are scared of trying new things and would prefer to stay where they are.  It doesn't mean they are happy where they are but they are so scared of change that they would prefer to be unhappy with what they already know.  To me this is crazy.  
• Aiming for perfectionism - Some people do not want to attempt a task unless they can be assured that they will do it perfectly.  The funny thing is you will never be able to do a task perfectly the first time.  This leads to people deciding it is not even worth attempting to do. 

Recently I interviewed 10 of the top businesswomen in Australia and I asked each of them about how they got started.  A common theme was that they all had some form of fear when they began their businesses but they were so determined to reach their goal, that they pushed through this fear.  Yes, they had many timed when things went wrong and they "failed".  However a key characteristic that they all exhibited was resilience. They used this failure as a lesson and learnt from it.  Another important key is that they did not tie their self esteem to their mistake.  

4 Steps to Overcoming Your Fear of Failure

1) The most important step is to love and accept yourself - A lot of the fears mentioned above are linked to a lack of self esteem.  By having a healthy self esteem will allow you to make mistakes and not be critical of yourself.  A healthy self esteem will tell you that you can do it.  And even if you do fail, you will learn so much from the experience and become even better and more knowledgable.  

2) Realise that you have an important gift to get out into the world - There are people right now who could benefit from the message and skills that you have.  By you not getting out there and sharing what you know, there are people not being able to move forward.  A lot is us think that no one wants to hear from me but that is the wrong kind if thinking.  We each are blessed a skill or message than can change people's lives - we just need to believe that we do!

3) Realise the failure is temporary - When you read the stories of most successful people, they all had big failures.  Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent light bulb said he discovered 1000 different ways not to design the light bulb before he had success.  Imagine is he gave up at 999!  Donald Trump almost lost everything, but then came back to have even greater success.  
Yes, it is not easy when you make a mistake but it is what you do after that counts!

4) Some of your biggest lessons in business are as a result of failure.  I can tell you I have made some huge mistakes in business.  I have lost lots of money and time as a result.  But am I bitter about making these mistakes?  No!  In fact, I am a great business coach because I have made these mistakes.  I now use those lessons to help other business owners from making the same mistakes.  

So next time you catch yourself failing to make a decision because of fear, don't get paralysis by analysis.  Decide that you will move forward in some way.  Your success is just on the other side of your fear!!!!!

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE?  You can as long as you include this blurb with it:  Women's Entrepreneur and Mentor Mireille Ryan teaches women how to build a business that they love. Get her FREE audio, "The secrets to building a Business You Love" at www.mireilleryan.com"