FYFW 2014: Fear of Failure
It’s my 3rd Annual Face Your Fear Week! Today we’re talking about the fear of failure.
No matter how much we want a certain outcome, eventually we’re going to bump up against disappointment in our lives.
It can be heartbreaking to experience failure, and most of us will do just about anything to avoid it.
The fear of failure shows up in my life more than any other kind, and I’ll bet it’s the same for you too.
You might be fearful of a work project because you don’t want to screw it up and disappoint your manager, so you put off starting it.
You might be afraid that you won’t keep your resolution to lose weight, so you skip your workout.
You might expect your business to fail so you don’t even try to create the products and services you dream about because it would hurt so much if no one bought them.
Fear of failure makes us procrastinate, play small, and dismiss our self-worth.
We’ve all experienced failures: bad grades in school, not getting the job you really wanted, gaining weight, losing money, or feeling like a bad partner, sister, parent, or friend.
When you’re going through a tough time, the last thing you want to think about is what you can learn from the situation. I usually want to punch something!
But after a while, you can look back on your failure and realize that something good DID come from the pain. It might not have been the outcome you wanted, but I’ve found that most people are grateful for the struggles they’ve faced (at least a little bit).
Think about a time when things in your life didn’t go as planned.
What have you learned from failing?
There’s a bright side to every failure you’ve experienced. In fact, here are 3 reasons why failure is awesome.
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See you tomorrow for more fear and fun!
Could not locate the trniaing worksheets that are referenced in the toolkit and overview article hyperlink did not work. Further directions to access the tutorial and worksheets please?Thanks I do appreciate the ease of online learning and your effort to offer useful resources to small businesses.JT
Hi Masato. When you enter your name and email into the opt-in box above, you’ll get another email with your username and password to access the materials in the Life Editor Clubhouse membership site. Once you’re logged in, click on “Editor’s Toolkit” and then click “Ebooks.” You’ll see the Face Your Fear Digital Guidebook that you can download. Hope this helps!
I love the Face Your Fear theme for this week! Such a smart and interesting idea 🙂 It’s funny because sometimes I feel like I have a Fear of Failure but then other times I wonder if it is actually a fear of success. I think I’ll have to check out tomorrow’s post and maybe it’ll become clearer to me 😉 I can definitely relate to a lot of the points you bring up in this post… especially the procrastination and not giving things a try in fear that no one will be interested or purchase anything. It’s something I’m working on though!
I’m looking forward to the rest of your posts this week! I think 3 of these 5 will definitely resonate with me quite a bit!
Thanks, Sarah. Sometimes my fear is a mix of failure and success.