OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF FAILURE
Writing a book and indeed any endeavor that you may be involved with will at times suffer set-backs, this could be in the form of writers block, finding a publisher or simply increasing your sales once the book is launched. For some, these hurdles will trip them up and cause the project to be shelved, with the use of phrases like ‘I’m too busy to cover this’ or ‘it was never going to work anyway’, just confirming their underlying doubt in the task in the first place.
The problem with ‘just putting it on the back-burner for the short term, whilst things calm down & and I have more time, patience……..etc’ is that once it goes on to that metaphorical ‘back-burner’, the likely hood of it being taken back off is remote indeed.
When a failure or setback shows up it really isn’t all negative, I remember working for a large company many years ago and being told that problems weren’t ‘problems’, instead they were ‘opportunities waiting to happen’. At the time most of the management team scoffed at this and being stuck in their ways viewed them as problems, and guess what? They remained as problems.
Failure is only failure when you choose to learn nothing from it, and I really do mean choose, that particular team were convinced that the current way of doing things was the best design, their performance stayed as it had always done and the same issues kept appearing. It is true that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Some of the most successful people and businesses know that learning from their failures and designing your changes accordingly is the key, any challenge is viewed for what it is, it’s a learning opportunity. Through challenges we have the chance to increase our own knowledge and grow, it can force us to step outside of our comfort zone and this we know can be incredibly scary, but staying inside of this comfort zone again will only keep you in the previous position and deliver the same results.
I’ve heard it said that if you want to become more successful you need to fail a lot more, the person who said this was indicating that these failures not only show you’re actually trying new things, but also you’re learning from any issues and growing as a result. The main point here is that people stop pushing forward because of fear, fear of failure, of looking stupid, of rejection or lack of knowledge, fear is one of the biggest barriers stopping people from achieving their dreams, and it’s all in their mind, believe me, you can change your mind-set if you want.
It’s worth remembering that people give more thought to what others think of them, than of what they think of you, being fearful of what anyone else thinks of you will only hold you back. Once you are able to see this it becomes a little easier to try new things for what they are, not for what people may say of you for trying.
The problem with ‘just putting it on the back-burner for the short term, whilst things calm down & and I have more time, patience……..etc’ is that once it goes on to that metaphorical ‘back-burner’, the likely hood of it being taken back off is remote indeed.
When a failure or setback shows up it really isn’t all negative, I remember working for a large company many years ago and being told that problems weren’t ‘problems’, instead they were ‘opportunities waiting to happen’. At the time most of the management team scoffed at this and being stuck in their ways viewed them as problems, and guess what? They remained as problems.
Failure is only failure when you choose to learn nothing from it, and I really do mean choose, that particular team were convinced that the current way of doing things was the best design, their performance stayed as it had always done and the same issues kept appearing. It is true that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Some of the most successful people and businesses know that learning from their failures and designing your changes accordingly is the key, any challenge is viewed for what it is, it’s a learning opportunity. Through challenges we have the chance to increase our own knowledge and grow, it can force us to step outside of our comfort zone and this we know can be incredibly scary, but staying inside of this comfort zone again will only keep you in the previous position and deliver the same results.
I’ve heard it said that if you want to become more successful you need to fail a lot more, the person who said this was indicating that these failures not only show you’re actually trying new things, but also you’re learning from any issues and growing as a result. The main point here is that people stop pushing forward because of fear, fear of failure, of looking stupid, of rejection or lack of knowledge, fear is one of the biggest barriers stopping people from achieving their dreams, and it’s all in their mind, believe me, you can change your mind-set if you want.
It’s worth remembering that people give more thought to what others think of them, than of what they think of you, being fearful of what anyone else thinks of you will only hold you back. Once you are able to see this it becomes a little easier to try new things for what they are, not for what people may say of you for trying.
