How to deal with the fear or failure

20 replies
Everyone gets the feeling of fear. But I feel that this feeling comes with a choice of reaction.
That determines whether you succeed or fail in life.

When you are overwhelmed with the feeling of fear, you have to decide what to do with it. Whether you should challenge yourself and surpass that fear or retreat and accept defeat.

Whenever you are set out to achieve something, you are bound to come across two impediments: one is the inertia and other is fear, basically of failure.
Inertia requires will power to beat your laziness, busyness, procrastination etc. But to beat your fears you need to use your faith; faith in your abilities, faith in God etc.

To overcome your fears, you need to go step by step and get confidence in your abilities. It's like building your muscles. Once you get the confidence that you can take calculated risks then you will be comfortable to go out of your comfort zone. Beating your fears then becomes easier and you can get more self assurance of success!
#confidence #deal #failure #faith #fear #fear of failure #success
  • Profile picture of the author Yury2006
    This is how I’m dealing with fear of failure.

    Basically the fear of failure is coming from the unhealed part of us. This part is trying to protect us from pain caused by possible failure. We experienced this pain one day – perhaps long time ago – and then decided that better to do nothing than to suffer from pain.

    So the process consists of 5 steps.

    1. We shall acknowledge that this fear exists. Everything starts with acknowledgement.
    2. We shall treat it with respect. This fear wants to protect us with his limited understanding of our goals. And there was the time when we gave him the power to decide.
    3. We shall firmly tell him something like this: “It was time, when I gave you the power to decide, and I would like to thank you for the job well done. But now I grew up and am taking the power to decide from you. I will decide myself what I’m going to do”. The words are not that important – this is the feeling which counts
    4. The next 2 steps are the most important ones. Really it’s not possible to get rid of this fear, if it exists already, it will stay with you up to the end of your life. What’s possible to do and what shall be done – to shift attention to another feeling which is stronger that this fear. When you succeed – then this fear will stay somewhere but you will not be paying attention to it.

    Such a feeling may be a strong desire, or another fear. I usually think about my death, how I’m meeting after the death my spiritual guide whom I don’t know now but whom I will remember after death (you can call him/it any names). And he will ask me – “why you didn’t do it?” I will answer (to protect myself) – “I could not do it!”. And then he will say in tender voice: “But you even didn’t try…”.

    After I imagine this scene, I feel so uncomfortable so start acting immediately The fear of not accomplishing my life tasks is greater that the fear of failure
    5. And then I ask the help from High Power and surrender (thy will be done). Once more - the wording is not important, the feeling counts.
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    • Profile picture of the author Vikram Anand
      Originally Posted by Yury2006 View Post

      This is how I'm dealing with fear of failure.

      Basically the fear of failure is coming from the unhealed part of us. This part is trying to protect us from pain caused by possible failure. We experienced this pain one day - perhaps long time ago - and then decided that better to do nothing than to suffer from pain.

      So the process consists of 5 steps.......
      Your thoughts are highly insightful. You have addressed the agenda of dealing with fear of failure from a complete psychological perspective.

      Many thanks for sharing!!
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    • Profile picture of the author xembergg
      Originally Posted by Yury2006 View Post

      This is how I'm dealing with fear of failure.

      Basically the fear of failure is coming from the unhealed part of us. This part is trying to protect us from pain caused by possible failure. We experienced this pain one day - perhaps long time ago - and then decided that better to do nothing than to suffer from pain.

      So the process consists of 5 steps.

      1. We shall acknowledge that this fear exists. Everything starts with acknowledgement.
      2. We shall treat it with respect. This fear wants to protect us with his limited understanding of our goals. And there was the time when we gave him the power to decide.
      3. We shall firmly tell him something like this: "It was time, when I gave you the power to decide, and I would like to thank you for the job well done. But now I grew up and am taking the power to decide from you. I will decide myself what I'm going to do". The words are not that important - this is the feeling which counts
      4. The next 2 steps are the most important ones. Really it's not possible to get rid of this fear, if it exists already, it will stay with you up to the end of your life. What's possible to do and what shall be done - to shift attention to another feeling which is stronger that this fear. When you succeed - then this fear will stay somewhere but you will not be paying attention to it.

      Such a feeling may be a strong desire, or another fear. I usually think about my death, how I'm meeting after the death my spiritual guide whom I don't know now but whom I will remember after death (you can call him/it any names). And he will ask me - "why you didn't do it?" I will answer (to protect myself) - "I could not do it!". And then he will say in tender voice: "But you even didn't try...".

      After I imagine this scene, I feel so uncomfortable so start acting immediately The fear of not accomplishing my life tasks is greater that the fear of failure
      5. And then I ask the help from High Power and surrender (thy will be done). Once more - the wording is not important, the feeling counts.
      Excellent suggestion, man. Where did you get this secret. The real solution to fear.
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    • Profile picture of the author tobyjensen
      Originally Posted by Yury2006 View Post

      This is how I'm dealing with fear of failure.

      Basically the fear of failure is coming from the unhealed part of us. This part is trying to protect us from pain caused by possible failure. We experienced this pain one day - perhaps long time ago - and then decided that better to do nothing than to suffer from pain.

      So the process consists of 5 steps.

      1. We shall acknowledge that this fear exists. Everything starts with acknowledgement.
      2. We shall treat it with respect. This fear wants to protect us with his limited understanding of our goals. And there was the time when we gave him the power to decide.
      3. We shall firmly tell him something like this: "It was time, when I gave you the power to decide, and I would like to thank you for the job well done. But now I grew up and am taking the power to decide from you. I will decide myself what I'm going to do". The words are not that important - this is the feeling which counts
      4. The next 2 steps are the most important ones. Really it's not possible to get rid of this fear, if it exists already, it will stay with you up to the end of your life. What's possible to do and what shall be done - to shift attention to another feeling which is stronger that this fear. When you succeed - then this fear will stay somewhere but you will not be paying attention to it.

      Such a feeling may be a strong desire, or another fear. I usually think about my death, how I'm meeting after the death my spiritual guide whom I don't know now but whom I will remember after death (you can call him/it any names). And he will ask me - "why you didn't do it?" I will answer (to protect myself) - "I could not do it!". And then he will say in tender voice: "But you even didn't try...".

      After I imagine this scene, I feel so uncomfortable so start acting immediately The fear of not accomplishing my life tasks is greater that the fear of failure
      5. And then I ask the help from High Power and surrender (thy will be done). Once more - the wording is not important, the feeling counts.


      I did it. What you said. It was interesting. Wrestling with my emotions to force what I want out of it.

      I get it. It makes me stronger. Then the false belief doesn't have so much of a hold over me.
      Pretty good. And very helpful.

      What you resist persists. And that makes us stronger. This is an important step you are pointing out here.

      Only what if it uses our own strength against us at that point? The false belief (really the emotion powering the false belief) becomes stronger as well with this type of interaction. Then we have to go to another level in our healing. Not always, just sometimes.

      The feeling has a specific message it is trying to get us to know and understand. But even that is not enough. It wants to be cured not just resisted to help you become stronger.

      Or the feeling can just hold out. Just bide its time until we let our guard down or become weak.

      Feelings have feelings. It is weird, I know. But take a moment and get angry at something.
      Now get angry at your anger and watch what happens. Did you see it move?

      Weird, right?

      What then? The programming is still there. Still working out of site.


      But you are right on too about not eliminating negative feelings completely either. That's not the goal. We need to be bigger than the pain so the pain shrinks to its normal, healthy, small amounts. Then we can live. I get that. I use the example forgiveness cures anger (a cure happens after becoming angry). It doesn't prevent it. We have to learn to be bigger than our anger so we can manage it because of the good that healthy, appropriate anger does for us. Like tell us something is wrong, or that a boundary was crossed.

      The next step or the most important step to completely undo false programming so it is completely gone. The false belief can be completely powerless over us. It becomes just another free floating concept.

      There are two parts to false beliefs - the concept and the feeling. The feeling is the most important thing because that is what powers the concept. Without the feeling the concept becomes just another statement in a book. We are completely free from the false belief even though the concept may still be floating around. The feeling completely drops the connection to the concept and shrinks to normal, healthy, appropriate levels. A healthy "exhilaration" of standing on the edge of a cliff would be a good example of fear. Back from breaking out into cold sweats and significant increase in blood pressure.

      Free ourselves from misinformation. This is the only way for the "anger" to be able to drop back to manageable levels. Only then can we claim back the opportunity to grow. Only then can we be much bigger on the inside than our anger. Substitute any false belief for our anger here. The process is the same.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    When you tell your mind that you will fail all the time, then there is a good chance that you will.

    You can always brainwash yourself and see yourself as a success. Overtime, you will start to attract success to you when ideas come to your mind and they might take you in the right direction.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheWriteOne
    Just create a fear for doing nothing. If you fear that nothing will happen if you do nothing more than fearing if you will fail, then you're good. For me, it is much more scary to be trapped in something for months thinking which is the best rather than just going with my instinct and facing what would lie ahead.
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  • Profile picture of the author yong guoyin
    When i feel that, i always try to tell myself, overcome it and you will get something that you want.
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  • Profile picture of the author C G
    You will always feel fear.

    The key is to understand that fear is good. That you are growing when you are taking action despite of the fear.

    Cheers,

    C.G.
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  • Profile picture of the author KiethJohnson
    Fear is something that will be there a lot. We all have those little fears deep down. I guess the best thing a person can do is to understand their fears and use it as a tool to be better. I think that fear can be redirected. For example, Fear of failing can be redirected to Fear of regret because you did not do anything so in the end you failed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Yury2006
    Hi Xembergg

    This is my routine, but it's based on the ideas I borrowed from some books mainly Neale Donald Walsch "Conversations with God" and Colin Tipping "Radical Forgiveness"
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  • Profile picture of the author DavidAllenNeron
    fear is fear, whether it's fear of success or fear of failure.

    We label it fear, but really it's just unknown and we as humans tend to fear the unknown, we prefer the familiar (better chance of us surviving longer if we stick with what we know); if you really have a difficult time and you attribute it to fear, I'd check out Google and YouTube for some NLP videos about fear and see if that doesn't help.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Frei
    Yuri posted a good method.

    However, what you feel and think usually developed in patterns. So, fear response is a pattern. I think of it as a railroad track. There's a station called "Fear". You can switch the direction of the tracks and direct your train of though towards a different station - "Encouragement".

    You do that by making conscious choice. When you feel fear, think about it this way: I now have a choice - to give up to fear and stop, or to do what I have to do. This was you acknowledge your fear and don't suppress it, and you're likely to chose to do what you're planning to do.

    One more strategy is this: get detached from the result. Don't bet on anything to make or break your life. This of everything you do as a scientific test. "Ok. Let's mix blue liquid and red one and see what happens" - you don't feel the fear. It's similar to Edison's idea about a thousand ways not to make light bulbs.
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    • Profile picture of the author Yury2006
      Hi TobyJensen

      I'm glad that you liked it. However, after reading your comments I decided to clarify my view on the point.

      It's not only impossible to eliminate negative feeling (in this case the fear of failure) but also very undesirable to do so. Because we may need this negative feeling at a certain period of our life. Because this negative feeling was initially not negative, and in it's essense is also not negative now. Each coin has 2 sides; the same feeling may be negative in one case, and positive in another. What we label "fear of failure" has another side of "being prudent". The only problem is that it got too much control inside us and overacts dramatically

      So the real problem is not in the fear itself, but that this fear blocks us from acting. This is because we have only 1 point of focus - this fear, and we are paralyzed. With the routine we're creating the 2nd point of focus, then step by step (time by time) make it stronger, and finally have the conscious choice which point of focus we would like to concentrate on.

      After we'have done this, the feeling of fear is gone for all usual decisions, we don't feel it and it does not prevent us from acting (or from not acting!!). But then there is a bigger decision to take, and this fear may be here once more. Each time in each such situation the idea is to check if we need this fear or not, and to make the conscious choice. What is it? The fear we shall overcome? Or the prudence we shall follow?

      Fears are important... Just the word is bad, nobody likes it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Cosmo458
        [QUOTE=Yury2006;9881896]Hi TobyJensen


        So the real problem is not in the fear itself, but that this fear blocks us from acting. This is because we have only 1 point of focus - this fear, and we are paralyzed.

        QUOTE]



        How true. This is invaluable info. Especially the feeling of being paralysed. I also used avoidance - did everything I could to avoid dealing with an issue. Same as blocking, I guess.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jeff Schuman
          Good points made here so far. I think you need to get in the game so to speak. Yury talks about being paralyzed from acting and I agree. Too many people fail because they never even get started. When it comes to Internet marketing many people analyze it to death and never get off the sidelines and actually start doing something. That is it's own form of failure.
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  • Profile picture of the author harvestmeaduk
    Fear can be very powerful. It can paralyze you and keep you from living your fullest potential.
    For years living in fear, I've found out one thing - action crushes fear. The more you do something (no matter how trivial it seems to you), the lesser you feel the fear.
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    • Profile picture of the author Vikram Anand
      Originally Posted by harvestmeaduk View Post

      Fear can be very powerful. It can paralyze you and keep you from living your fullest potential.
      For years living in fear, I've found out one thing - action crushes fear. The more you do something (no matter how trivial it seems to you), the lesser you feel the fear.
      Truly appreciate your viewpoint!
      We all get bogged down with fears. But the fact remains that there is a victory beyond fears; and that is only possible when one acts against one's fears.
      Actions in the direction of fears not only crushes them but also boosts one's confidence to face any kind of fears in life!
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  • Profile picture of the author JimsonWright
    Everyone can get scared of failure. You know in yourself that you did what you can and chances are you might fail.

    The problem is, before even doing what you can you make fear take over. Make fear work for you.

    Think of it this way, Why would you fail? You will fail because you did not do anything. If you did something there's a chance that you will succeed.
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