- There is no doubt that failure is a bitter and difficult pill to swallow, but if we deny it or try to hide it, we will not learn from the experience.
- Thus, we will remain anchored to what is known, within a comfort zone that prevents us from facing new challenges and growing as people.
- Therefore, although we cannot avoid feeling that fear, we can learn to manage it and prevent it from taking away good opportunities.
There is no doubt that the failure It is a bitter and difficult pill to swallow, but if we deny it or try to hide it, we will not learn from the experience and will live permanently in fear of failing again.
Thus, we will remain anchored to the known, within a comfort zone that prevents us from facing new challenges and growing as people.
Therefore, although we cannot avoid feeling that fear, we can learn to manage it and prevent it from taking away good opportunities.
Five steps to deal with the fear of failure
- Feel the fear. Most people don’t like to feel fear, so they tend to hide or deny this emotion. However, suppressing fear will not make it dissipate, on the contrary, it will continue to lurk inside us.
- Discover the origin. Behind the fear of failure, other fears usually hide, such as the fear of being criticized, of not being up to the task, of disappointing someone or of losing the status quo that we have achieved. In turn, behind those fears is usually a deeper story. The fear of making mistakes usually comes from experiences in which we have failed, which have become anchored in our minds and are reactivated every time we have to face a challenge. For this reason, the fear of failure is more common in people who have received an overprotective upbringing, who have had very strict parents or teachers, or who have perfectionist traits.
The good news is that the simple fact of discovering those negative experiences that have marked us or the erroneous beliefs that support the fear of failure, already allows us to better deal with this feeling.
If you also re-elaborate these experiences with techniques such as EMDR or hypnosis with the help of a psychologist, you will “reprogram” your brain so that these experiences do not continue to condition you in the present moment.
3. Visualize the process. Interestingly, a study conducted at New York University found that positively fantasizing about the results we want to achieve translates into less energy and poorer performance. This means that positive thinking alone is not enough.
However, another experiment conducted at the University of California found that when we visualize the process we must follow to reach a goal, we achieve better results and stress less along the way.
Therefore, to overcome the fear of failure, it is convenient that you visualize the obstacles that may arise and see yourself overcoming them. That simple exercise will give you the dose of confidence you need.
4. Reframe failure. Failure is a very vague word. In fact, we can choose to see failure as “the end of the world”, as proof that we are good for nothing, or we can see it as an experience that allows us to grow and gives us even more energy, because it means that we are one step further. close to our goal.
In our culture, failure has a negative meaning, but it doesn’t have to remain that way. If you start to think of failure in terms of learning, you will be less and less afraid of facing new challenges because you will know that, even if you make mistakes, you will have learned.
5. Create a plan B. On many occasions, failure scares us because we understand it as a permanent situation, a kind of stigma that we will carry throughout our lives. However, to paraphrase William D. Brown, failure is just an event, not a person. Failure does not define you as a person and much less is it permanent, there is always the possibility of trying again or changing course.
In fact, having a plan B is often comforting and helps us overcome the fear of failure. This way we can feel more secure because we will know exactly what to do in case the original plan does not bear the expected results.
Nevertheless, remember that, after all, life is about making decisions. In most cases, these decisions are neither bad nor good, but simply lead you down different paths, where new opportunities are always waiting for you.
Related Notes:
Doritos partners with youth mental health organization ReachOut
X-ray technique creates the world’s largest LEGO hospital
Nurse records Tiktok crying after patient’s death; they tunden it in networks