Overcome your fear of failure at work

Apr 27, 2024 8:00 am

Overcoming the Fear of Failure at Work (Part 1)

Hey ,

I know how tough it can be when you're feeling the pressure at work and that nagging fear of failure quietly slides into the DM of your heart.

It can beat all kinds of drums.

Worry that you might not succeed or meet expectation...

Fear that stops you from taking risks...

Putting yourself out there...

Or leading your life and career in the direction that matters most to you...

You're not alone - I've been there myself. I've helped others too.

And in this series, I want to share some actionable ideas that have really helped me and my clients push through that fear.

Can we do this together? Yes or Yes?

All right...

Activity #1: Start by Extracting Lessons from Your Past Failures

I know, I know - dwelling on past failures sounds like the last thing you want to do right now.

But hear me out.

All negative experiences have positive benefits!

Even the most painful ones, carry in them, some hidden positive benefits if we look closely enough.

Think back to a failure you experienced, whether at work, at home or elsewhere.

Write down at least three lessons you can take away from that situation.

For example:

Maybe you missed an important deadline, could that teach you to prioritise tasks better?
Or you took on too many projects and failed to deliver. Could that tell you to say "no" more often?
Perhaps you aimed for perfection, but realised you needed to be a bit more forgiving of yourself

Once you identify those lessons, ask yourself - have you actually applied them going forward? If not, now is the time.

So, let's say, as with the case of a client I was handling some years back.

The client was about to lose her marriage, so she was fearful and panicky.

The potential loss of her marriage was not the reason she scheduled our sessions.

The main reason was basically because she felt that some other things were affecting her, and that she was not mentally stable.

So, she needed to achieve mental stability to be able to handle some of the challenges coming up in her own life and work.

Interestingly, we found that the reason she is afraid her marriage may fail is because her parents' marriage had failed.

And she had not taken the time to extract positive lessons from her parent's 'negative' marriage experience.

So, in our session, I asked her if she could pick three lessons from her parents' failed marriage.

She said, "Well, I'm not sure I can pick anything, but let me try."

Eventually, she picked four lessons that she could take away from her parents' marriage.

I asked her again if there is anything she is currently doing on that list that may contribute to her marriage failing, and that uncovered a lot of things she had not been thinking of before.

So, if you have been experiencing failure, or if you have failed in the past, you may want to start by picking that past failure, and writing out three or more positive lessons you can learn from that failure.

If you have failed in the past at all — maybe you failed when you were young, maybe you failed a task at work, or you failed to get that job, or maybe in some other context that is not completely related to your work — look at those experience(s) and ask yourself, "What lessons can I pick out from these experiences?" and write out everything that comes to mind.

Trust me, make that demand on your mental capacity to bring out a minimum of three lessons from that.

And you will learn the most important lesson when dealing with fear of failure: Failure has a lesson to teach you.

I'm going to repeat this one last time:

All negative experiences have positive benefits!

You won't find them on surface level

So dig!

Your neural pathways will thank you for this activity.

I will continue in the next newsletter.

Question & Answer Segment

You probably have questions you really would like someone to help answer.

On the podcast, I want to answer any questions you have. So this week, if you have questions about fear or failure, please ask here.

I'd love to get your response to today's newsletter. Reply and share your failure story.