The fear of failure is something that can prevent us from getting what we want while undermining our self-confidence and jeopardizing our entire life. Overcoming the fear of failure is mandatory to embrace a happier and more successful life.
Let’s see how to do it in 6 steps!
1) Accept your mistakes
Accepting your mistakes is necessary to achieve success. Consider them as a chance to learn something you didn’t know. Consider them as lessons to avoid doing the same mistakes over again and to start creating better opportunities for you to succeed.
Change your point of view: avoid associating failure with your person, but rather see it as information that comes from the experience or situation you are experiencing. In this way the mistake will become something useful that will help you to continue in the right direction until you reach your goal.
2) Get help.
We are often afraid to ask for help because we feel it makes us less competent in the eyes of others. We consider the request for help as a kind of failure, because we do not know everything there is to know.
Change your point of view: First of all, start thinking about how you feel when someone asks you for help. You will most likely be pleased, appreciated, and therefore eager to help. Try asking for help when you need it from a person you know or you respect, imagining how that person will feel good and valued in helping you.
3) Learn to say no to others.
We often say yes to everyone avoid conflict, but think for a minute how you are getting used to these people who will end up considering your precious time of little value: they will get the idea that you are at their service, that their needs are more important than yours and that you are unable to negotiate the things that are important to you.
Change your point of view: Learn to respond differently, starting with the little things you don't want to do, rather than doing them forcefully. Try to answer with the phrase: “I would like but I can't”, referring to another moment, when you feel that you can and that you will, rather than saying yes to everything. You will see that you will feel stronger.
4) Learn to say yes to yourself.
Often, we are afraid to say yes to ourselves, to the opportunity that presents itself, to friends and colleagues who believed in us, because that yes means uncertainty - but also the possibility of enormous growth and success.
Change your point of view: In those cases, focus on all the great things that may happen, instead of negatively feeding everything bad that could happen. Try to imagine the scenario beyond the problem, when you will manage to be there, to all the benefits you will have, once you have overcome the obstacle.
5) Do not think that you are the only one to make mistakes on the face of the earth.
Remember that everyone makes mistakes several times a day, we just don't point it out to those who made a mistake. It is for this reason that sometimes we think we are more wrong than the people around us. Smart people make mistakes on purpose. Take scientists for example. All human evolution is based on the principles of scientific research, which occurs through trial and error. The best scientists try to be as wrong as possible, because they want their results to be as accurate as possible. This allows each of us to benefit from their mistakes.
Change your point of view: Try to get out of the safety of your comfort zone. Act as if you were a scientist and take small risks every day, even trying to make small willful mistakes and see if others notice and point it out to you. This will help you strengthen your self-confidence and immunize yourself from error. Gradually you will see that you will feel more immune to error.
6) Turn fear into action.
Often the fear of making mistakes blocks us to the point that we do nothing, remaining still, with the effect that in the end we did not do what we should have done and consequently, in one way or another, we were wrong.
Change your point of view: Try to carve out five minutes a day thinking about the worst situation that could occur if you decide to act, getting everything wrong. What will happen? Will you be fired? Will you be isolated? Thinking about the worst will help you to go back and find solutions to the problem, to reduce your fears and to face the fear of failure in a different way.