Is The Fear Of Failure Keeping You Stuck?

The power of the mind unparalell to anything else. Any professional athlete, high level entrepreneur, or performer has done work on their mindset to ensure that they continue breaking through their glass ceiling repeatedly. This is what we would call a "growth mindset". Meaning that anything is possible, as long as you are willing to try, fail, practice, and perservere until you are success at what ever it is that you wish to achieve.

On the contrary, we have the ever-present fixed mindset that is rooted in fear. You may have a fixed mindset if you have find yourself saying things like:

I'm not good enough/smart enough.

I don't want to risk it.

Why try if it won't change anything?

It's not my fault.

I shouldn't have to try so hard.

I'll probably just give up anyway.

If I'm not naturally good at this, I should just quit.

Fear of failure is a silent epidemic that bleeds into our lives and chains us to an existence that is unfulfilling and stifling. Let's say that you really desire to run a 10k race, but you talk yourself out of it before you even get started. You don't want to embarrass yourself or fail, so if you never start, you can't fail.

In my line of work, I often witness women talking themselves out of coaching or taking a program because they don't want to fail intuitive eating, like they failed at dieting. (I would like to add here that if you are a chronic yo-yo dieter, you are not a failure. Only 2-5% of people are able to keep their weight off after dieting.) After several failed attempts belief and trust in themselves has been eroded and like with any relationship, when trust has been lost, it often takes time to regain that trust again. The result? They stay on the struggle bus for months, years, or decades.

The fear of failure keeps us stuck in various ways:

Poor mental and physical health, but feeling helpless about the situation.

It prevents us from furthuring our education.

It keeps us from pursuing promotions in our career.

It holds us back from trying anything new like piano, singing, yoga, or a new job.

It keeps us in victim-mode.

When you have a fixed-mindset, failure feels like the absolute worst case scenario. The truth about failure is that as long as you learn something from the experience that you can apply to your life to improve going forward, then it wasn't a failure. It is only failure if you don't learn anything from it and give up or you never try in the first place. Failure is not a death sentence.

We can have a growth mindset in certain areas of our life, like playing an instrument for example, but have a fixed mindset when it comes to our career path. The great thing about mindsets is that they can be changed!

Over the next 2 weeks, notice the types of thoughts that arise when you are met with a challenge. This will help you to determine what areas of your life have a fixed-mindset and how this mindset has affected your life.