Think for a moment, and remember if ever in your life you have not been afraid of failure. impossible truth! According to psychology, “Fear is the emotion experienced in the face of real, imminent or imagined danger”.
The best way to overcome fear is to face it. It may sound crazy, but forcing yourself to lose your fear is also synonymous with self-improvement. Steve Jobs advises, “Every entrepreneur must be willing to act, you need to fall and fail, or you won’t get very far.”
In business, risk is the fine line between success and failure. This is essential to the survival of any business, as it keeps us on our toes and allows us to be better prepared. Here are 9 ways to react to fear of failure.
1 ➡ Identify what causes you to fear.
You need to channel whether what you are about to decide actually represents risks or opportunities. You need to be very astute in differentiating the real from the unreal.
Fear can have two points of view. It can be positive, which drives us to do incredible things, or negative, which paralyzes us from acting. Identifying them with name and surname allows you to face them day by day.
When faced with a difficult or critical situation we must take a deep breath and focus on what we need to address. The problem is not the fear, but the way we react to this feeling.
2 ➡ Commit to face it.
This is the most important point and the one we must have mastery of. It is useless to identify them and not face them. Facing your fears allows you to control your life. Every time you run away from them you lose ground and they gain it. To do this we must consider these points:
- ✅ Try to use them to your advantage.
When you experience changes in your life, it is normal to feel fear. It is impossible to make them go away, so we must change the meaning of them. One way to use them to your advantage is to exercise the way you talk to yourself.
Having a good interpersonal communication can be a point in your favor. Reminding yourself of your faults and your abilities will help you to develop your confidence, making your fear diminish.
It is important to ask yourself questions such as: Why am I afraid? What do I get out of this fear? Surely you will get answers that activate your self-awareness allowing you to react. If you do not act in time, you will feed your fears, and that will be the end of you.
- ✅ Do not let it limit you.
Don’t lose focus on your goals, you have to be 100% sure of what you are willing to do. When we express: “It’s difficult” or “It can’t be done” you are allowing your doubts to be imprisoned by your fears.
You must be very careful with this type of thoughts since their only purpose is to limit your personal development. It is said that what our mind projects, is the result of the fears we acquire throughout life.
- ✅ Do not let them silence your dreams
More than fear of failure we have is fear of change. Many times fear is a companion that tries to communicate something to us such as: lack of knowledge, insecurity among others. Try to use them to your advantage, do not let them limit you, there are times when we need a little pressure to move forward.
When we know that our life will be affected by changes, we awaken our fears. Here it is forbidden to doubt what you want to achieve. Do not stop. The most important thing is not to lose sight of your goals. Do not allow your fears to silence your dreams.
What you can be sure of is that you cannot eliminate fear. Dangerous situations will always arise and this natural emotion will appear. We cannot avoid it or ignore it, but we can control it.
3 ➡ Get out of your comfort zone.
Whenever you set a goal, you must be willing to step out of your comfort zone. Comfort is nothing more than the psychological state in which you have always felt safe. It is an emotional balance that does not accept fear or anxiety.
To grow in the professional area, it is necessary to face new challenges, pressure, or even generate anxiety. Out of the comfort zone you can appreciate new opportunities, but you can also experience panic attacks that will want to destroy your self-confidence.
There are entrepreneurs who live full of fear of anything, and avoid growing because of lack of confidence or low self-esteem. It is not about thinking that we will never fail, but much less erasing from our minds that we can make it.
4 ➡ SET realistic goals:
Think calmly about how serious your risks are, and what your potential is. An entrepreneur must be clear about how far his or her capabilities go. If you start out with complex things, it is almost certain that you will end in failure.
When we talk about realistic goals, we are referring to objectives that your resources or capabilities can reach. You should not have goals that are so difficult that you will never achieve them. Remember, these same goals will be the engine to keep you going.
5 ➡ BE PREPARED FOR THE WORST.
There is a precept under which I have lived: prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and accept whatever comes.” Hannah Arendt. It is surely the phrase that few of us would like to shout. Well, when we start a business we always want to prepare for the best.
There are two points that we must get used to. Successful people are always looking to learn, while unsuccessful people already know everything.
- ✅ Always see the positive side.
Preparing to face failures is not having a negative mind. On the contrary, a mind focused on learning will always see failure as the impetus that will motivate you to move forward.
Keeping the positive side in every business does not mean that you are not prepared for mistakes or failures. In the professional sphere it is also a success to learn to recognize your limits.
- ✅ Make decisions.
The first thing you should do before making a decision is to identify the risks and consequences. Do not rush, take your time especially if it is something complex. Getting frustrated when things don’t go as expected is a fool’s errand. The important thing is to choose new alternatives and try as many times as necessary. There is an old phrase that says “he who does not risk does not win”.
Whenever you are about to make an important decision, try not to find yourself in a state of emotional instability, much less in a state of anxiety. Avoid getting carried away by fear, since fear always leads us to believe that something negative is going to happen. The best deals always come from negative experiences.
6 ➡ Listen only to those who know how to overcome the fear of failure.
What we learn after failing can be enough to try again. In case you need wise advice be careful from whom you receive it. You must be careful not to confuse wise advice with foolish opinions.
You should only listen to suggestions from those who know. there are people around us who are very upset about our success. be careful about it!
Try to get recommendations from trusted colleagues or friends who understand the project you are undertaking. Remember, your biggest competition is your fears and limitations.
7 ➡ Always keep an ace up your sleeve.
Every business has its pros and cons. This is a reality that we cannot avoid. Having a secret weapon after implementing a project is wise, it is not negative to think that things could go wrong.
Having a contingency plan will ensure that you don’t make mistakes when you have to make difficult decisions. You should know in advance what extra efforts you will make in case something goes wrong.
You must objectively evaluate the failures before you activate your plan B. Remember! You always learn from mistakes and the experiences they leave behind. You can’t be extreme in just thinking that the results will be black and white.
8 ➡ Learn to grow
Surely many people have told you that the key to success is based on emotional intelligence. Well, part of that intelligence lies in learning from mistakes and failures throughout life.
For many, fear keeps them alert, and that allows them to prepare better. It is better to expose yourself to failure and learn from your mistakes than to never try and doubt what you are capable of achieving later.
Don’t forget to share these experiences with others; these lessons can help future entrepreneurs if they put them into practice. Having a mirror to look at every time you start a business can help you overcome many obstacles.
We should always keep in mind that helping others, is a priceless feeling, which in the end has its great reward.
9 ➡ try again
No one is prone to failure, but once it happens it is not permanent. One of the way to use it to your advantage, is to change course, you must force yourself to the possibility of trying again.
There is nothing better than learning from mistakes since they will always make you cautious about future decisions. When you feel fear, don’t avoid it, try to control it and decipher what it is communicating to you.
Life is about constantly making decisions. At least it was a good experience. Bill Gates agrees with the idea that “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it’s more important to pay attention to the lessons that failure teaches us”.
Throughout this post you could discover that fear is neither good nor bad. We cannot obey an irrational feeling or fear without being sure why it is invading us.
Fear could save our lives, if we learn to control it. But we must be very careful because it could also become a danger if we allow ourselves to be paralyzed by it.
If we allow fear to control us, it causes an emotional blockage that paralyzes us and annuls our capacity to react and look for alternatives to be better.
Always remember. Every time you face a fear, that fear will no longer have the same effect as before.
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