Today I am pleased to announce that I have done my first  post my first collaboration post with Angie over at Confessions of an Awakened Youth – a blog focused on self-improvement, mental and physical wellness, and spirituality.

For this collaboration, we challenged ourselves to write a post on a set topic – our focus was on “Getting over the fear of failure.”

Here is my effort below.  Please let me know any thoughts and comments below and don’t forgot to check out Angie’s work afterwards (link at the bottom)

Do you live a life of safety?

Are there things you want to do, but are afraid that if you fail you will be laughed at, mocked and feel like a loser?

If you live within your comfort zone, then you haven’t experienced life for what it is.

  Life has ups and downs

Fear of Failure…

Showing fear of failure to such an extent that you won’t take on any challenges and risks shows that in many ways you have failed – at life.

With my personal failures, I have experienced times where I have been humbled by others, times of humiliation where all I have wanted to do is disappear and one moment where I hit rock bottom and couldn’t see a way out.

But I have been healed by determination not to quit and the passing of time.  From these experiences, I gained mental toughness to keep trying new things.  Every time I failed I have bounced back better than before.  These are what I learnt from failure:

Grieve your mistakes…

When failures happen, you think about them – a lot.  It’s perfectly acceptable and natural to grieve your failures if you learn from them.

When a relationship broke down, I spent a long time grieving what I had lost, thinking I would be alone forever.  But the benefit was I found out who my true friends were, established what I wanted from future relationships and moved on.

True friends are there for you

And move on…

Moving on is important, people relive failure just as much as past glory.  The former helps create that fear of failure.

I failed my driving test, a lot.  It consumed me and all I could think whenever I sat behind a car that I was a failure.  So, I stopped – but the failure consumed me and all I thought about was what a pathetic loser I was because I couldn’t drive.

I only resolved the issue when I pushed myself to take the risk and after nine years of failing to move on, I finally passed my test.

Don’t strive for perfection

People who fear failure imagine everything to be perfect.  I have single friends who dream of the perfect “one”, being the right place, the right time, the right person.  If you follow the perfect mindset, then you will never take any risks.

Recently I invested in the stock market, I was waiting for the time to buy but ever since I have been an adult there have always been terrorists, change in political scope and uncertainty in the market making it a bad time.  I realised that there would never be the perfect time to buy.

Risk can pay off

No ones cares

Many people’s fear of failure is the humiliation they imagine.  But the truth is no one cares about your failure.

Once I fancied myself as a stand-up comedian, there was a massive risk of failure because people either laughed or they didn’t.  One night I died on stage completely, people just didn’t laugh at my jokes, even my best ones and as each joke failed my confidence went.

I left humiliated, walking into a nearby bar to drown my sorrows.  While drinking a pint, I looked around, no one noticed my humiliation, there was no one gossiping about my failure – no one cared about what had just gone down, they were all too busy enjoying their evening.  I would go back and continue to work on my stand-up.

You don’t have to impress anyone

Fear of failure can come from social conditioning, if you have family or friends who belittle any of your efforts and rub in your failures, then you may start thinking what is the point in trying.

I started seeing more success in my life when I stopped worrying what other people thought and just did it!

“Who do we set out to impress?
Ourselves?
Or others?”
Anthony T. Hincks

A life learning experience…

Although I would rather not fail, I realise it’s an important process to enable growth and change.  Therefore, if you really want to change your life – failure is something you should get familiar with.

If you fail you will get over it – the human mind is conditioned to make do with any situation they are in, that is why you see people in bad situations rationalise why they are better off.

Fear of failure makes you paralyzed to move.  Sometimes failure happens, but you have to keep moving on and keep playing the ‘game’

Every failure I have made I don’t regret.  In many ways, I laugh and accept it was not meant to be.  Or I realised from my failure how much better things turned out because I failed.  I failed at landing my “dream career” – but I got a better one.

I failed at living abroad because I was homesick and missed my family – but I came home found myself the better life I was looking for just 30 minutes down the road from where I originally lived.

Sometimes failure is good – so don’t fear it!

If you enjoyed this post and are interested in reading more about Fear of Failure, then I recommend reading Angie’s post Why “Failure” Does Not Exist

Published by James L

15 thoughts on “Life Experience: a natural cure to get over fear of failure”

  1. Your blog was a good read. I’ve failed at a lot of things in my life, but I’ve never stopped trying. I am scared of heights, so I took helicopter lessons. People said that they didn’t like my writing, but I never gave up. Today I have my quotes around the world.
    All I can say to everyone is, follow your dreams and turn them into reality. Failure is when you stop trying, so my advice is ‘don’t stop’.
    All the best for the future. You are already a success in my book.
    Anthony T Hincks

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the comment. As you have found confronted your fears is a great way of sorting them – I had a similiar story with heights, expect I did climbing – it was the falling back after a climb that was the hardest part.

      Thanks for your comment and keep on with the positive vibes 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  2. Awesome post! You touch on THE most important thing that gets in the way of people and success: Obsessing about what other people think of them. Your anecdote about sitting in the pub after your failed stand-up gig was perfect. Nobody cared! Nobody noticed! And even if they did, it wouldn’t matter.

    Compete against yourself.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you – it was humiliating at the time, but these failures makes great experiences and great stories!

      In my research I found a sport psychologist, who when working with their clients, would ask them to visual in being the best person they could be rather than focusing on the competition, as this added pressure resulting in failure!

      Thanks for your comment

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  4. Although I believe in what you are trying to say certain failures destroy you for life. There is no way to learn from it, no second chances, and no future to hope for. 😞😞😞😞

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Agree there are certain failures that can change your life for the worse forever – borrowing money from the wrong people or taking a risk that results in the death of you or a love one. I guess as long as we breath we have to make do with the situations we find ourselves in from the risks we take.

      Thank you for your comment
      James

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. You’re right on there but in Canada 🇨🇦 one degree of 0.08 and you are sober but at 0.09 you’re a rotten heinous drunk driver. Lose your license for 1 year, alcolock installed for 1 year, criminal record now so cannot work, go to school, volunteer, travel to a first world country and try to raise a family in 2017 and do it well, is impossible. I can never get out of this one. Thank you for listening James and not judging 🤓🤓🤓🤓🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

        Like

  5. See I don’t think anyone fails, we just learn what doesn’t work for us and I don’t count that as failure. We are unique and we should be proud of that. It has of course taken me a good few years to get to this place in my life. When I was younger failure was all over the place and frankily the notion of failure just makes life unplesant and horrible. So I say be gone with the notion and appreciate our uniqueness and that doesnt make us failures.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the comment! Agree with you fully.

      There are things we learn from our failures and if I was to quit something after failing because I realised it wasn’t for me I wouldn’t see that as a failure and would think ‘at least I tried it’ rather than living a life wondering what would happen if I took ‘x’ risk.

      Angie covers really well in her blog thoughts on why she doesn’t think failure exists. If you have a minute do check it out ☺

      All the best
      James

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Totally, I tried to look at Angie’s blog , but when I clicked on the link it took me nowhere and said post doesn’t exist or something.

        Failure is an exam thing – pass or fail. But in real life no it is not there. You are right to say at least you tired. Real life is about adapting and being flexible and smart and not taking to heart. and the faster we take failure concept out of our life in terms of our life then we can be happy . no one fails at life, it is the road they travel and we are unique.

        have a great day
        speak later.

        Liked by 1 person

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