Fear of failing in business is pervasive – regardless if you are an entrepreneur, in. Management or an employee – it plagues us all. The social media obsession only makes the fear worse. Quite naturally most of what you read or hear are the major successes and achievements of other people – never the failure so that makes it all that much worse.
Business Failure – It is so easy to lose sight of the fact that failure is normal. There is not one person who has ever endeavored to do anything worthwhile whatsoever who has not failed and most likely multiple times. What is that old Japanese Proverb? – Fall 8 times – get up 9. But it is so true.
Looking Past Your Fear
You have to begin to learn to look past the fear of failure. It is difficult to not feel the embarrassment of failure. However, failure also represents that we need to work a lot more. You might have to go back to that drawing board time and time again to get it right, so to speak… more time… more elbow grease to get it right, maybe multiple times and that is hard to admit to yourself sometimes. Truthfully, it is the one thing that probably holds most people back the most from trying anything that seems challenging.
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Fear of success – Stop comparing yourself to others. It is perfectly alright to admire the success of others, but do not envy them instead focus your energy on what you want to create and take action in spite of your fear and doubts. It should be recognized that a certain amount of failure is healthy, in other words, if you aren’t failing in reality that means you probably aren’t really trying very hard and just coasting along in a comfort zone. Turn that failure into a natural part of the process for success and develop a system for learning. What went wrong. If I do it over, what do I do differently and what can I learn from the experience? In other words, put a system in place that will empower you – normalize the failure and view it as an opportunity as opposed to a dead-end.
If there are potential obstacles, learn to anticipate them. In other words, take out the fear of uncertainty. “Positive thinking alone is not enough, “-explains Vanessa Loder in her article for Forbes where she reported on the study, – “Research has shown that the best outcomes are created when we dance positive thinking with visualizing the future obstacles and
Failure Should Never be a Secret
Failure should not be a secret – vent about it. When you openly realize that failure is a very real possibility you ease a lot of burden and realizing that perfection is never going to happen. In other words, you need to manage your own expectations and be as realistic as possible and forgiving of yourself with your success metrics. Take some time to think about what the worst-case scenarios for your business or project can be. What happened the last time you failed at something? Did your entire life come crashing down – not really, did it? Probably not. No, you were probably embarrassed for a little while, then bounced back relatively unscathed. It isn’t fun to fail, but it isn’t as terrifying as you are building it up in your mind to be. In fact, it isn’t as terrifying as action is. Staying stuck where you are is actually scarier than failure. Your fear of
failure is totally normal – but that doesn’t mean it is something you want to continue to hold on to.
Don’t let Fear Hold You Back
Fear holds you back from taking action. It takes courage to jump right in, but it is the only way to have growth and develop that growth-oriented mindset. Almost everyone has heard that quote by Thomas Edison who said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”, but it is a phrase that investors and entrepreneurs and business people understand. People who have failed and are now successful have learned that their failure taught them what really works and how to capitalize on it. In other words, failure is a great way to learn.
Motivation Helps with Perspective
When trying to motivate others, it is always helpful to motivate yourself and one of the best ways to do this is through motivational speakers – they have the ability to talk about and share with you things and ideas you have never experienced so that you can have a fresher approach to your future goals and perspectives. This is not an overnight fix to overcoming fear of failure because it takes time to process failure, but once you put some of these ideas into practice, you will be able to turn the perspective around to your growth and your success. Execution is everything – once you have a good idea and all the right people in place to execute everything, now is the time to push forward with your marketing and optimization and begin to understand your customer and how they are going to utilize your product or service but your job is never done. The success of your business will always be contingent upon the success you have an understanding of your customer and treating them right and providing an excellent product and/or service that they can get nowhere else.
Since the day we are born, we are programmed to be displeased with failure, especially our own. We are taught how we should be ashamed and embarrassed about this, especially if it is in a major area of our life, such as business.
This is 2020, and time we truly start to understand the true meaning of failure and embrace them and grow from them. Turning an idea into a business is a humbling and not for the faint of heart and every step taken raises the bar just a little and we need to realize that everything we do has a learning curve and most importantly, how we learn and grow from that failure and move toward improvement is an important part of our business growth. We need to understand that failure is part of growth and should be embraced as much as the wins and that we still and always will encourage risk, every time because we will no longer accept the fear or let it paralyze us.
