Overcoming Your Fear of Failure

If you follow us on Instagram, you probably saw my recent post about making mistakes. I confessed that even though I have worked on my mindset a lot in this area, I still have a little fear about making mistakes.

People fear making mistakes for several reasons. They might think, “If I’ve failed once then I’ll probably fail again.” They could fear the repercussions and risks. They don’t want to disappoint others or are afraid of rejection. They’ve defined their self-worth by their success. Maybe avoiding failure has become a learned response—they expect someone to come to the rescue because someone always has and therefore have never learned how to face failure. They may have a fixed mindset about their abilities—they don’t think they are good enough to achieve success. They are embarrassed, discouraged, and defeated by mistakes.

When I posted on Instagram, I asked for advice in overcoming that negative mentality and got some good advice:

• Remember that making mistakes is part of being human.
• Mistakes are OK, just learn from them.
• There are no mistakes, just learning opportunities. A mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.
• Mistakes help us grow.
• Mistakes are going to happen—they are part of the journey.
• Try to figure out why you fear mistakes, then remember that the only validation you need comes from God. He’s not going to stop loving you just because you make a mistake.
• Consider that most things heal with time.

Then earlier this week, I read a book called 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin. The 10^th thing fit perfectly with this discussion—mentally strong people don’t give up after the first failure.

Success isn’t immediate, and failure is almost always an obstacle you will have to overcome. Mentally strong people don’t view failure as a reason to give up. They use it as an opportunity to learn from and improve. Amy Morin breaks down the process of overcoming the fear of failure. She says to treat failure as the beginning of a long journey to success. She suggests changing the way you think about failure. The above advice fit right in with her list.

• Failure is part of the journey.
• Believe that you can handle failure.
• Decide that you can learn from failure.
• Failure is a sign that you are challenging yourself.
• Choose to try again.
• Believe that you have the power to overcome failure.
• See failure as a learning opportunity.
• Resolve to try again.
• Develop a plan to increase your chance of success.
• Identify and replace irrational thoughts about failure.
• Focus on improving your skills and acknowledge your strengths.
• Avoid making your self-worth contingent on achievement.
• Know that worse things can happen to you.
• Practice making small mistakes.
• Think of the best and worst case scenarios.  
• Keep failure in the proper perspective.

I’ve actually written about the concept of making mistakes a couple of times. You can read more about it here and here. It must be something I need to learn.

How do you face the fear of failure? How do you teach your children that making mistakes is OK? Comment below with what has worked for you.