Embrace your mistakes to beat the fear of failure and live your best life
How do you feel about failure? Are you the kind of person who shrinks from mistakes, or do you throw yourself into every new opportunity regardless of the potential outcome?
A man who never made a mistake, never made anything, Napoleon once said, and I happen to agree. Failure is a key part of any journey towards success, and if you stay in your comfort zone, carefully avoiding any blunders, you will find it far more difficult to create the future and the life you really want.
Of course, this is far easier said than done! If you have ever procrastinated over a task because you were worried about a failed outcome, you’re definitely not alone. It’s completely normal to feel doubt whenever you attempt something new, and exams and job interviews in particular are well-known to be stressful.
The trick, however, is not to let doubt or fear take control. If you do, you will limit your achievements and your life, not to mention increasing those feelings of anxiety and envy as you watch others progress with their dreams.
The destructive nature of fear
Perhaps you are worried that people might discover you’re not really good enough? The fear of being unmasked as a fraud is a common feeling that often leads to sleepless nights, as you live out all those worst-case scenarios in your head.
Left long enough, these feelings and scenarios, together with that negative chatter we often have with ourselves, can make us ashamed about who we are. This is incredibly destructive to our wellbeing and our potential to achieve.
Yet when we really stop and think about it, haven’t even the most successful people failed at one point or another?
What lies at the root of our fear of failure?
Failure is a natural part of life, and unfortunately, most of us learn to fear the prospect of it at an early age. From the first spelling tests we sit to the early swimming lessons we take, we hear the words “you passed”, or “you failed” regularly from the lips of parents and teachers, friends and siblings.
These words have the power to make us feel elated and devastated in equal measure – and if you happen to have strict or demanding parents, or you had a spiteful teacher, you may have attached an intense fear to the very idea of failure.
It is so important to recognise that it is not failure that makes us feel bad, but the emotion we have attached to it.
Personally, it took me a long time to recognise that a relatively minor event in my life, one that took place when I was just seven years old, was responsible for creating my fear of public speaking and of being visible in the world. I had felt embarrassed and ridiculed, and I unknowingly held onto that feeling of shame throughout my life.
Finally, many years later, I was able to understand and address the effects of that event through the power of hypnotherapy.
You can change your thinking
If you’ve been reading my previous blog posts, you will understand that you have the power to change the way you relate to fear. Our fears are just thoughts; thoughts we have decided to attach significance to. The good news is, the moment we challenge these thoughts, we can transform our thinking for good.
The solution lies in our subconscious mind. Once we discover the root cause of our automatic childhood beliefs, we can update our programming with brand-new, positive thoughts and beliefs. The mind isn’t able to work with conflicting beliefs, so once we’ve updated our programming, we are finally free to live the lives of our dreams!
So let’s start learning to love our mistakes, embrace imperfection, cultivate new skills, and revel in the improved quality of life they all bring. After all, mistakes are all part of life’s great journey…and if you need any more convincing, did you know that Thomas Edison failed over 10,000 times before he finally created the lightbulb?
You can download my 7 Tips to Stop yourself from Procrastinating or Quitting by entering your email below.
My tips will help you to take control of your own mind, become more aware of that critical inner voice, and give you strategies to shut it down.
You will learn how to start mastering your thinking, with simple techniques that will leave you feeling positive and focused on what you want to achieve in life.
Take your first step to beat fear of failure and live your best life.
