Fear of Failure and How You Can Overcome It

Darryl Bachmeier
Jun 29, 2020
Mind


If you’re going through even the subtlest fears of failure, you’re going to have to try and overcome it. The fear is quite normal, and a little bit of it is present among all minds. Some minds know how to overcome it and rise above.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur who wants to start a venture or someone who’s trying to pitch an idea, that slight fear of failure might make things harder for you. So trying to overcome that fear and leaving it behind should be the way to go. But how do you do it?

The fear is quite normal, and some call it typical human nature. The degree of anxiety, however, varies a lot from person to person. Again, and failure varies from person to person too. So here’s our insight on the awful fear of failure.

What is the Fear of Failure?

Atychiphobia is the fear of failure. If you have atychiphobia, you’ll likely have a persistent and irrational fear of failing in different stages of life. If you’re afraid of failure, you can certainly try to overcome it. But a little bit might always tend to stick around.

Fear of failure is often linked with some other disorder. The common ones include anxiety disorder, mood disorder, and an eating disorder. On another note, if you’re a perfectionist and you absolutely must get everything right, the fear of failure might get the better of you sometimes.

A False Self Confidence

Sometimes trying to put on a show only does so much. On the other hand, building up a facade might not work out for you as you might think. If you’re truly confident, you can probably guess that you have to go through a couple of failed tries before you succeed.

Perfectionism, along with a bit of over-personalization, may lead to a heightened fear of failing. Perfectionists fear failure as they don’t want to be humiliated after all that work. And if you’ve got an ego, you will end up not coping up at all. At some point, you can’t even look past these failed events.

Overcoming the Fear

But it isn’t all bad. Every person goes through the fear of failure, but if the fear stopped everyone in their tracks, you would never even hear about people succeeding. So it’s indeed possible to overcome the fear of failure. And we’ll give you a couple of tips on it.

Set Up Approach Goals

A mistake you tend to make is the one of setting avoidance goals. So what are avoidance goals? If you’re focusing on avoiding an adverse situation, the condition will fall under avoidance goals. But if you want a positive outcome, the goal becomes an approach goal.

Positivity has a significant effect on everything in your life. It all starts from the inside, and you know it. If you’re looking for better well-being, you can start by setting approach goals.

Approach goals won’t eliminate the fear of failure. But they can minimize it to quite some extent. These goals incorporate the positive mindset with something that a person wants to achieve. And if you’re focused, you can keep up the excellent work.

On the other hand, setting avoidance goals will drastically change your perception. You’ll be cradled with a bit of negativity while trying to avoid the stressful state. Taking the easy way out will only exaggerate your fear of failure. So concentrate on the approach goals.

View Things as Challenges

Having a competitive mindset isn’t always recommended. But you can undoubtedly apply this here. Think of the stress as a challenge; once you’ve got that part right, you can be prepared to conquer the challenge.

We’re all familiar with video game challenges. Human minds think alike by considering the different levels as different challenges. Which means they think of the stages as something they can handle.

If you can apply the same rule to the stress in life, you might witness fantastic results. So try it out and see if the fear stays.

Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself

Another awkward thing that people love to do is blame themselves for a sudden failure. While it’s fantastic to have a certain amount of accountability, you shouldn’t go overboard. You’ve got to understand that it’s not always on you.

If you tend to put yourself down after every wrong step, you’re only going to make things worse. For a change, try and be kind to yourself. Even if you don’t see immediate results, you can expect to alleviate that fear of failure by quite a lot.

Visualize Your Obstacles

There’s a significant difference between imagining a favorable situation and coming up with a vision. What we mean to say is that you can’t solely rely on positive thinking. You’ve got to concentrate on visualizing things. If you can map out the obstacles you’ll face, you can be well prepared to face the world.

Conclusion

Being afraid of failure is human nature. And you can’t change that in a matter of minutes. But you can truly concentrate on minimizing the fear and overcoming it. Incorporate all the tips we’ve talked about and start anew. You can even come up with your solution.

There is no one key to success, and it’s okay to fail. Things like perfectionism will lead you to believe that you must succeed every step of the way. But give yourself a break, and you can genuinely see that the fear is starting to fade.

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