How to stop fearing failure that's what I'm gonna talk about today. I'm gonna
talk about three ways to recognize if you fear failure and five tips to stop
fearing failure. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist and
this channel is about mental health education and self-improvement. I
publish weekly videos on Wednesdays so if you don't want to miss one click
subscribe. Accomplishing nearly anything worthwhile has a fair amount of failure
that goes along with it and if you fear the fail, then you don't want to try
anything you don't believe will work. And if you fear failing, then you're
underachieving for sure. So here are three ways to
recognize if you fear failure. Number one: you're not aggressively and
enthusiastically pursuing your goals. Now hopefully you have a few goals for
yourself or maybe you don't because you don't want to take the risk.
Lack of goals or having a lot of trouble making decisions about things are a sign
that you fear failing. Number two: you're obsessed with being perfect.
Perfectionism is a sign that you fear failure. Now yes, there are obsessive
people or people who obsess about things because they want to have everything
just so, but behind the need to have everything just right is a fear of
having to deal with it not being the way you want it to be. And but even in non
compulsive people the need for things to be perfect is also a way to avoid
something. Number three: you procrastinate or use other means of sabotaging
yourself. You can unintentionally create a circumstance that makes it impossible
for you to do something or for something to work and these circumstances become
convenient excuses for your lack of progress. So in this case, it's easier to
blame your lack of progress on not getting something done or not having
everything ready or whatever circumstance you create. When in fact,
you're not allowing yourself to follow through in the way you need to because
if you do your plan may not work. Do any of these sound like you? Well here are
five ways to overcome your fear of failure. Number one broaden how you
define failure. Failure is relative and how would you define an epic
fail? Would it be losing a bunch of money? I've always had this fear of having a
party and having my own show up. So because of that I would avoid having
parties. I'd rather be invited to a party. Well the closest I ever came to
experiencing that was having a birthday party for my son where we invited his
entire class plus some other kids but only about ten kids showed up. and I had all
this food and everything and I was really disappointed because only a third
of the kids showed up but I don't even think my son noticed. He had a great time
with his little crowd. It was me I so here I was seeing it as a failure
because only 1/3 of the kids showed up but for him he had a great time and
hardly even noticed that. So if I look at this under a different lens, instead of
judging it by numbers I could judge it by the quality of the interactions that
he had. He had a great time and that's really what mattered. Now that's just a
minor example, but it's just to illustrate how if you expand how you
measure the success of a given circumstances you can find a way to
measure success even if you don't get your entire desired outcome. So desire
more outcomes and you're bound to achieve at least one of them.
Number two: realize the failure isn't always about you. If you internalize your
negative experience you're bound to wallow in self blame and have a pity
party. And this state of mind sets you up for the self-sabotage that I mentioned
earlier where you find things that get in the way of your being able to pursue
something. You have to remind yourself that there will be circumstances that
are outside of your control that are going to affect your pursuits. You may
overcome these circumstances or you may not but you'll never know if you will or
won't if you never even try. Number three don't focus on other people's end points.
You can't play the comparison game. You don't know what steps that person took
to get where they are and even if all things were equal, which they are not you
still you're still a unique individual and the way you interpret the world and
act on your opportunities is different from the way the next
person responds to their circumstance.s And those differences can make big
differences in outcomes. Number four imagine the worst that could happen and
prepare for it. So however you define failure is it really that bad? And what
could you do to handle that situation? If you have confidence that you could
handle the worst outcome, you'll feel more confident to move forward with your
plan. Number five: appreciate the value of failing. There's
a saying in medicine that it's dangerous when you don't know what you don't know.
Knowing how things can go wrong helps you appreciate the scope of it. You
really don't know the bad until you experience it at some level. You learn
something every time you fail so learn to enjoy the process of seeing just how
far you can go with something and then when you fail, you evaluate the situation
and correct your course. It's not realistic to expect that the course is
going to be perfectly mapped out for you ahead of time every time and you're
gonna know what that perfect course is. So you just keep moving forward until
it's not working for you anymore and then you pivot and all the while you're
fine-tuning and fine-tuning is a good thing.
How has fear failure negatively impacted your life? It's probably more than you
think. Try some of these mindset shifts to help you push past that fear. Thanks
for watching. Share this video with someone you think it may help and like
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