Fear Of Failure
- Do you have a fear of failure?
- Is your childhood causing you to fail now?
- Learn to overcome a fear of failure!
One of the most common fears, and one that will stop you from adopting a more self disciplined lifestyle, is the fear of failure.
People who have a fear of failure often have difficulty in pushing themselves forward to achieve their goals. This usually occurs because of a mindset that tells them they will fail at whatever they do.
As a result this fear of failure can stop people from achieving things, even when they know they are perfectly capable of achieving it.
Do You Suffer From A Fear Of Failure?
If you think you may have a fear of failure that is holding you back, here are some questions you can use to determine if you have a fear of failure.
1 - Will You Work Harder To Keep From Failing Than You Will To Win?
People who suffer from a fear of failure are often motivated to work hard in order not to fail.
Failure is something that is constantly in the back of their mind, and as a result the actions they take are done to avoid a failure, rather than achieve a success.
Typically this involves “playing it safe”, not taking too many risks and staying inside their comfort zone.
On the other hand, people who do not suffer from a fear of failure are motivated to work hard in order to win or be the best.
Consequently their actions are much more adventurous and they are willing to take greater risks, and get outside their comfort zone.
2 - Do You Work Harder To Keep What You Currently Have? Or Work Harder To Get Something Better?
If you work harder to keep something you have, this may be because you have a subconscious fear of failure.
Since you are always concerned about loosing what you have, you are therefore motivated to keep what you currently have, rather than try to get something better. Again, this involves staying in your comfort zone, and not taking too many risks.
Living Below Your True Potential
As you can see from these two examples the fear of failure causes people to live mediocre lives, far below their true potential.
Fear of failure prevents people from ever starting to work towards a goal, because they feel the risk of failing is worse than the victory of success. Often these people have an attitude of “if it’s not broken don’t fix it”.
Where Does A Fear Of Failure Come From?
Fear of failure usually results from your childhood, the stories you hear from other people or films that you have seen which greatly exaggerate real life consequences.
All of these influences can instill a fear into the mind, causing you to become much more cautious and reserved than you normally would be.
Typically this effect is gradual, and develops over several years. However when a fear of failure does manifest itself, it tends to become a downward spiral, whereby the more fear you give into, the more fearful you become in life.
The extreme of this would involve someone who fears the outside world and does not leave their house. This is known as agoraphobia.
Dealing With A Fear Of Failure
A simple technique you can use to help overcome a fear of failure is to use something called a progressive collapse. This involves first thinking about all the bad things that would happen if you didn’t do something.
Then ask yourself what would happen after that, and after that, and after that. Keep going until you find the extreme of the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Often you will find that the worst thing you thought of wasn’t so bad after all, and most of the time it won’t even happen.
Another method you can use is to purposefully do things you are afraid of.
Usually when people have a fear of failure it becomes a habit, and consequently they give into fear without really thinking about it.
If you can recognise this habit in yourself, you will be able to identify times when you are purposefully avoiding doing something because of a fear you associate with it.
However by purposefully going ahead and doing the thing you fear, eventually you will break that habit.
The key point here is that the more you give into fear, the more fear will control and restrain your life. The more you resist fear, the less fear will control your life, and more liberated you will feel.
Hello!
I have some problems about social fears. When I want to make phonecall I have a problem to do that. Only if something is urgency. Then I start to use sms. Something stops me to make phone call. I think that is not good. But I don’t have fear when I want to meet somebody live. Only with the phone calls. I would like to solve this anoying fear. I think that is social phobia, something like that.
Thanks for any advice or suggestion about this!
Hi Vlada,
Fear of making phonecalls is actually a very common fear, and although it is difficult to say exactly what causes this fear without more detail about yourself and your background, this fear usually results from some negative experience you had in the past with phones/phonecalls.
A bad experience with a phonecall in the past may have become rooted in your subconscious, and you may not even remember the negative experience you had in the past.
Usually it is something like parents telling you to hurry up on the phone, parents listening to phonecalls or saying something on the phone which once caused you to become embarrassed. All of these can cause future anxiety when using the phone.
Another reason for this fear may be feelings of low self esteem, and feelings that you will not know what to say on the phone, or that you will be unable to keep the person interested. This stems from feelings of unworthiness, that you feel you are unworthy and uncomfortable being the center of attention.
I am just throwing some ideas about, as it is impossible to say exactly what is causing this fear without knowing more about you.
Whatever the reason that is causing you this fear it is important to understand that you were not born with this fear, which means you acquired it at some point in your life.
What you might want to try doing is to first look at a phone, and make a note of any feelings and emotions you are experiencing. Do you feel nervous just looking at a phone? do you feel anxiety? Increased heart rate etc..
You would then want to think of anything in your past that may have caused you to feel this way. These feelings of discomfort are an indicator of some pain you may have associated with phones in the past.
The next step would be to pick up a phone and switch it on. Listen to the dial tone. Do you feel more uncomfortable doing this? Is your anxiety increasing? Is your heart beating faster? Again, try to think of anything in your past that may have caused you to feel this way.
Next you should pick a number with the intention of calling it. Dial the number, noticing how you feel, but do not dial in the last number.
The aim here is not to call another person, but to notice how you feel when you are dialing a number. Do you start to get more uncomfortable?
Again think of anything that could be causing you to feel this way, then think about what the worst thing that could happen would be. What are you really afraid of?
It is most likely that you do not fear the phone itself, but you fear something else such as making a fool of yourself. Whatever that fear is, that is what you need to focus on.
The final step is to actually call a number. Maybe you can start by calling a family member. Do you still experience discomfort then? Or is it only when you call friends or unfamiliar people.
If this is the case you may be suffering from low self esteem and feelings of unworthiness, and would therefore benefit from reading the articles on self esteem on this site.
After this you can call other people, and again notice how you are feeling, thinking of why you are feeling this way and anything which could possibly have caused it.
If you do these exercises, slowly over a period of 1 month you should greatly reduce or eliminate your fear of phonecalls. A good idea would be to set yourself a goal of using the phone to call somebody in 1 month.
Do each step I have listed for 1 week, until the final week when you call somebody. It is very important for you to analyze your feelings during each step, and to think of things in your past which may have cause you to feel this way.
Your first phonecall may cause you to feel nervous and uncomfortable, but don’t worry that’s natural and indicates that you are growing.
What you should do immediately after your first proper call is to call someone else. The more you force yourself to call people, the stronger you will become and the less fear will control your life.
However the more you give into this fear, the worse it will be and the harder it will be to reverse. Remember, its ok to make mistakes and nobody is perfect. We learn through our mistakes, which makes us better and stronger people.
If you want you could even start calling people you don’t know, for example order a piazza over the phone, call a store to see if they sell something, call a library to ask if they have a book etc… It doesn’t matter if you make a fool of yourself when you speak to them as they don’t know who you are anyway!
If you are really serious about overcoming your fear of phonecalls, these examples would be excellent to practice on. Try to notice how you are feeling throughout the call, and after it.
What is causing you to feel the way you do? Is it really that bad, for you to feel the way you are feeling? Is anything bad going to happen? Whats the worst that could happen talking to someone over the phone?
You said that you don’t have any problem meeting someone in person, which seems to suggest that you may have had a bad experience with phonecalls in the past.
Usually social phobia causes people to feel uncomfortable meeting other people in person, although it may also occur with phonecalls as the person feels uncomfortable being the center of attention, like they are not important enough to listen to.
Any fear will take time to overcome, and will cause feelings of discomfort because you are taking yourself out of your comfort zone, and doing things you would rather avoid. The only solution is to be persistent and take things slowly, if you are able to do this you will eventually overcome your fear.
To help speed up this process give yourself a reward after you complete each of the steps i have discussed. This will help to associate pleasure with phonecalls, rather than pain.
I suspect you currently associate some kind of subconscious pain with phonecalls, which is causing you symptoms of fear when you try to use the phone.
You may also want to focus on the benefits of overcoming this fear to help motivate you forward.
The articles i have written on self discipline will tell you more about how pleasure and pain effect the things we do, and the motivation we receive from them.
I would recommend you read those articles, in addition to the articles on self esteem. Read 1 or 2 articles a day, and they should help you quite a lot.
If you need further help on anything just let me know.
I am a commodities trader and after a bad experience I was terrified to make a trade for fear of failure. After five or more years I have overcome that problem and now I find I panic once I have entered the trade and sometimes make costly errors due to the panic. Any suggestion how I can turn this around ????
Hi Ron,
Virtually all fears people have are a direct result of some negative experience they had in the past. In your case, it seems as though your fear resulted from a costly mistake you made in the past. Now your brain has learnt to associate your work with that pain you experienced, causing you fear and anxiety now and in the future.
There are two approaches you can take to overcome this fear.
The first involves gradually exposing yourself to the thing that is causing you the most fear. If this involves trading, then trade in small amounts gradually increasing the value of your trading until you build up to a level where you feel confident trading again. Do this slowly but keep pushing yourself forward.
By doing this you will build up your confidence, and establish a winning thought pattern in your mind. This is a standard method used by psychologists to help people overcome their fears.
The other method involves doing large trades straight away. However you will most likely find this causes you lots of anxiety because you will still worry that you will make a mistake.
Whatever method you use be sure to give yourself a meaningful reward when you make a good trade. At the moment your brain is linking pain with trading, you need to change that connection so that your brain links pleasure with trading. You can do this by using rewards when things go well.
Altogether i would say try not to be afraid of making mistakes, we all make mistakes and thats how we learn and improve. I know when it comes to money making mistakes can be very costly, but so can many other mistakes we make in life. So try not to see failure as a personal failure, but rather as a lesson. This is important, because the more you fear making a mistake, the more likely you will be to make mistakes.
So to recap the 2 main ways of overcoming fear which you can do by yourself include:
1) Gradual exposure to whatever is causing you the fear. Working slowly and building up your confidence.
2) Total exposure where you face the fear head on.
Most psychologists recommend gradual exposure, as total exposure tends to cause a lot of anxiety and is difficult to do on your own.
It is also worth noting to yourself what your current level of anxiety is when doing certain tasks, you can then do various exercises to lower that anxiety.
Remember feelings of panic and anxiety are symptoms of fear. If you can establish exactly what is causing you to be fearful and overcome it, you will remove that anxiety.
I have written about methods for overcoming anxiety and also about the importance of pleasure and pain in peoples lives, you may find some of these articles from the self discipline section relevant to you.
http://www.eruptingmind.com/pleasure-pain-focused-people/
http://www.eruptingmind.com/overcoming-lack-of-self-discipline/
http://www.eruptingmind.com/practicing-self-discipline/
let me know if you need further help.
Hi Martin,
I was used to be a friendly and outgoing person. However, due to extremely drunk incident. My so called ‘close’ friends had embarrassed me in front of the public of my foolish actions that I did (which I barely remember it). After that incident, rumors were spread even worse than I thought. Most of my friends had left me. And now, whenever I get to see that any of that bunch of ‘close’ friends outside, I feel so insecure. I am often laughed by some of the school mates who I dont even know. I am so stress up. What have I done? The image of that drunk incident keeps playing in my mind every single day and I dare not talk to anyone anymore. What should I do?
Hi Joobe,
I can understand why you must be feeling quite upset right now, its never nice to have people laugh at you, or to have your “friends” leave you because of something you did.
The best advice i can give you is to recognise that you cannot change what you did. It happened and you have to accept that. So if you are wishing how you would have done things differently, don’t. This will only make things worse, and you wont change anything.
What you should be concentrating on is how you can make the best of a bad situation. This is what you are going to be dealing with in the days and weeks to come, and is what you have the power to change.
So forget about the past mistake you made, no matter how hard it seems, just let it go and look forward from now on. ok?
Your first problem seems to be having people laugh at you and talk behind your back. I don’t know what it is you have done, but whatever it is obviously people are interested by it and think it is worth talking about.
There is little you can do about this, since you can’t control what people talk about. What you can do however is to minimize the effect of the gossip and rumours.
There are 2 ways you can do this. The first is to act as though you completely do not care about what you did. You understand that you were drunk, and that people do silly things when they get drunk.
Do not show people you are embarrassed or upset by it, and if you can laugh at yourself and have a sense of humour.
If people think you are upset by something or embarrassed by it, what do you think they are likely to do? They will talk about it more!
Some people are just like that. If they see something affects you, they will do it more to get a reaction from you. This gives them a sense of power and pleasure. It makes them feel better and more powerful over you.
However if you do not appear upset, are able to laugh at yourself and continue as normal you take away this power.
Remember, when anything big happens its only natural for people to talk about it after it happened. But believe me, sooner or later people will forget about it and talk about something else. Especially if you make it appear as being no big deal.
The second thing you can do to minimize the harmful effects of gossip spreading, is to innoculate people against that gossip.
For example, if you know someone is going to find out about what you did then you can tell them about it before they find out from someone else.
When they do find out, because you have already told them about it, it will seem less shocking because you already told them. It always seems worse coming from someone else, as they are likely to exagerate.
Only do this with people who you know are going to find out, but dont already know. Again, stress how you realise it was a foolish thing to do, but you were drunk and people do silly things when drunk.
Things are usually not as bad as they seem. The reason it seems really bad is because it happened to you. Other people will probably be far less concerned about you, as most people are too focused on their own lives.
so don’t assume the worse, and feel that you should hide yourself away. That wont solve anything.
Just understand that people love to gossip (especially girls) and all you can do is minimize the effects of that gossip, and control the way you react to it.
In terms of your “friends” leaving you. If your so called friends have treated you so poorly, then are they really your friends? And if so do you want friends who will treat you that way?
If you want to continue a relationship with them, then you can talk to them and explain how you do not appreciate what they are doing and ask them why they are acting that way when you thought you were friends. If they are your close friends, you may be able to put a stop to it.
I know this must be a very difficult time for you right now, but you have to be strong and deal with it in the best way you can.
Believe me, it will make you a stronger person, and even though things look bad now, in the future you will look back upon it as a valuable lesson.
Sorry i can’t give you more specific advice, as i don’t know what you did. But do you think you will be able to use any of my advice?
Yes Martin, thanks alot for the advice. I definitely have to learn to move on and be stronger.
Hi Martin,
I’m in the insurance business. Making daily cold calls to prospect for new appointments is my fear. Sometimes when I’m the only person in the office, I will stare at the name list that I have and I don’t want to pick up the phone. I mean I try to motivate myself before I go into the office like visualising the benefits that I will gain but once I sit down, my mind is saying to me no way, I’m not picking the phone.
My other problem is doing cold prospecting on the streets, meaning stopping strangers on the street to share with them the concept of life insurance. My colegues have so much courage that they can approach anyone on the streets.
Appreciate your advice.
Hi Sam,
I used to work for a book company that involved making cold calls in an attempt to sell people books. So i can understand where you are coming from.
When it comes to making cold calls i found the most effective way to sell was to really believe in your product. If you think you have a good product, then you will see selling it as you doing someone a favour because it will benefit them.
However if you don’t believe in your product, you won’t be motivated to sell it or sell it very well.
In my case i did not believe in my product, and did not like the idea of trying to persuade people to buy something i thought they really didn’t need. As you might have guessed, i wasn’t very good at cold selling and left that job quite quickly.
So ask yourself if you really believe in what you are selling? Are you giving people a good deal, from which they will benefit?
If the answer to these questions is no, then your job may be conflicting with your moral values. In other words, you are trying to do something which you don’t believe is right or good.
In this case you must either become a believer in your product, or find another job.
There is another possibility, and that is a lack of confidence in trying to persuade people mixed together with a fear of rejection.
If you have had bad experiences selling in the past, you may have learnt to link a negative emotion with selling. This then causes you anxiety whenever you try to sell something in the future.
If you read the articles on self discipline on this site, you will learn some tactics on using pleasure and pain to motivate you into taking the actions you want to take. But briefly it involves using a reward system, so that you learn to link an activity (e.g. selling) with pleasure.
This could involve eating some sweets after every call you make, or something else that rewards you for taking action.
When doing this it would also be benefical to examine your feelings when you don’t feel motivated to make your calls. Try to understand why you are feeling the way you feel, and also what it is you actually fear.
Overall cold calling is a skill that can be learnt, and some people are naturally better at it than other. However it is strongly influenced by your moral values, the question is whether you are willing to compromise them?
Good evening, I have a social phobia! i have really big teeth, reading about in your youth made me really think, all the names i was called tears to my eyes the heart ache and pain
i had to stick up for my self but i managed to run instead of fight, but now im a lot older and im old find it haunts me, my wife left me because of my ways i went bank rupt and dont trust anyone i am so self concious and no one to turn to for help i have been on anti-depressants but i feel they are just hiding the truth, find it in your heart to help someone in real need, bless you
Hi, please read the follow article series as i think it will help you alot :
http://www.eruptingmind.com/identify-feelings-in-life/