“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Winston Churchill

Are there times when you feel you don’t have what it takes to succeed?

What is Fear of Failure?

Fear of failure is when we are so afraid that things could go wrong that we don’t even attempt to move forward to achieve our goals.

However, every time we do something, especially something we have not done before,  there is a possibility of us failing.

This is easy to observe with kids. My 6 year old is afraid of pouring milk into a glass because more often than not, he spills some liquid. This triggers a negative reaction from the adults around him, usually me.

As grown ups we don’t even think about failing to pour liquid into a glass but as kids it took some spilling and practice on our side and patience from the people around us until we mastered the skill.

Moreover, as adults we may fear wasting limited resources such as money, energy, and time.

What Triggers the Fear of Failure?

We may not be aware of these behaviors or thoughts that keep us worrying about shame or embarrassment:

• Overthinking previous failures

Once we made a mistake, it may take some time to get over the negative feelings of regret and bitterness.

However, rehashing and obsessing about your negative experiences will keep you feeling shame, sadness, or anger.

In addition, your brain cannot distinguish the actual negative experience of failing from your repetitive thoughts about the event.

• Anticipating the embarrassment of failing

We imagine in detail the disapproval and disappointment of others when we are not able to accomplish a specific task. 

Even though friends and family may be supportive, we may be scared of not living up to their expectations.

You may also like How to Go From Failure to Success: 7 Easy Tips

• Feeling that the task is overwhelming

We may have a great idea, but we don’t know where to start. So we don’t get started.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers states that It takes around 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert or master performer in a given field.

• Being frequently criticized 

Everyone makes mistakes.

However, having someone in your family who points out every little mistake can make you feel like you are failing all the time.

This will undermine your self-esteem and willingness to try something new.

Here are some tips on How to Build Your Self-Esteem.

• Comparing yourself with highly successful people 

It’s great to feel inspired and learn strategies from highly successful people. 

However, it can feel daunting to move forward if you compare your uncertainties and small steps with the massive accomplishments of others.  

Overcome the Fear of Failure: 10 Easy Tips

1 – Make a List of Your Strengths

When you make a list of your strengths you remind yourself of the resources available to overcome your fear.

Here are some strengths to help you come up with your own list:

Listening skills

Enthusiasm

Honesty

Problem solving skills

Trustworthiness

Creativity

Determination

Discipline

Dedication

Leadership skills

If you are not sure about your positive traits ask a friend or family member.

We have hundreds of strengths but sometimes we are not aware of them.

Find out How to Love Yourself the Way You Are.

2 – Remember Your Past Successes

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” Theodore Roosevelt

Connecting with previous successes will give you the confidence to overcome your fear of failure.

What are you most proud of?

What is a difficult task, experience, or goal were you able to achieve?

Here are more tips on how to be happy by building self-confidence.

3 – Describe What Failure Looks to You

It is helpful to identify your biggest fear so that you know how to work around it.

Here are some common fears of failure that most people have

-losing money

-making a fool of yourself

-everyone laughing at you

-too high expectations

Stephen King received rejection letters for 6 years until he published his first short story. He kept adding the rejection letters to a nail and later to a spike while he continued doing his job as a writer.

Once you know why you failed and what you could do differently, it’s time to try again.

4 – Reflect on Self-Criticism

When we are scared, we usually retreat toward what we know, even if it is not an ideal situation.

Many times life pushes us to do things we are scared to do.

As kids we might have been afraid of a bully,  the cool kid at school, a test, or a mean teacher. Somehow we had to overcome the fear of failure by asking for help, studying, or figuring out how to solve the problem.

Sometimes when we fail, our self-criticism is so harsh than it is worse than having failed.

5 – Do Something Today

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Henry Ford

When we want to overcome the fear of failure it’s important to feel happy and confident.

Instead of focusing on one ambitious goal, think about a system you could put in place that will lead you to the outcome you want to achieve.

For instance: if you want to write a book but the idea sounds scary or you have many half written manuscripts, change your goal from writing a book to writing a specific number of words ever day.

Make it something easy to achieve to build your confidence. If you write 300 words every day, in 200 days, around 7 months you will have a 60,000 word manuscript.

If we are busy making progress toward our goal, we don’t have time to worry about our failures.

6 – Accept Uncertainty 

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Confucius

There will always be obstacles and unexpected events. Moreover, there are so many variables interacting together that it’s difficult to predict an outcome.

Imagine that after many years of hard work, you finally opened your own restaurant.

Someone else worked on an application to make video communication more efficient.

Suddenly, there is a COVID-19 pandemic and one person will make millions while the other person will lose a lot of money.

Even though it was a circumstance nobody could foresee, it made one person successful and the other person will struggle to get his or her investment back.

7 – Focus on the Experience Instead of the Outcome

“Fear regret more than failure.” Taryn Rose

Many times seemingly senseless ideas keep coming to our mind and we dismiss them because we are busy or don’t have enough money.

If an idea of an experience continues to come back week after week, year after year, you better pay attention and figure out how to start working on it.

Elizabeth Gilbert, before writing her bestseller book “Eat Pray Love” had been thinking about learning Italian for a long time. Even though she had a hard time justifying to herself and others why she wanted to study a language that was only spoken in one country.

However, she loved studying Italian. It made her happy and kept her mind of the pressures and heartache of her divorce.

Instead of only thinking in terms of success and failure consider including experiences that you enjoy.

Here are more tips on How to Find Joy in Life Again.

8 – Write About the Process

“As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.” William Makepeace Thackeray

If you are not sure how to positively think about past mistakes, write everything that comes to your mind in a notebook.

Once you have it all written down you’ll be able to reflect and overcome the fear of failure. 

Moreover, have a notebook handy so that every time you think about past mistakes you can write it down right away.

It is also helpful to write about related questions and uncertainties.

Here are more tips on How Writing can Make you Happy.

9 – Consider the Worst that Could Happen

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos worked at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw as one of the company’s vice presidents. He researched new business opportunities on the internet. He decided that books were the most viable option to sell online.

That’s when Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994 in his parent’s garage.

To overcome the fear of failure it is helpful to When thinking about the paralyzing fear of failure, down the worst case scenario will give you an idea of what you have to lose. You could lose your money, your time, and effort. How would you feel after that?

10 – Read Biographies and Memoirs of People You Admire

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Steve Jobs

Every successful and accomplished person made mistakes and learned from them.

In addition, it’s very interesting to read about the details of these mistakes to overcome the fear of failure in our own lives.

Here are some of Steve Jobs experiences that could be considered “failures”

• Dropped out of Reed College

• Launched many product failures

• Hired John Scully as CEO of Apple

• Believed that Pixar would be the next great hardware company

• Founded NeXT, a company that never took off according to Job’s vision

• Was forced out of Apple

However, most people only remember Steve Jobs as a charismatic, creative, and visionary leader who oversaw innovative products such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.

Reading biographies and memoirs encourages you to work on your own ideas, experiment, and think about your mistakes as stepping stones to build further success.

Here are more Self-Improvement Ideas for a Happy Life.

What do you do when things don’t work out as expected?

Do you have a favorite strategy that helps you overcome the fear of failure? Let me know in the comments below.