Your fear of failure could be holding you back. So what should you do?
Today GenuLines offers some ideas that turn the tables on fear and make it serve you.
Fear Setting – How to Remove Your Fear of Failure
Many of us have an innate fear of failure. We say that if we let things go wrong, we won’t have the means to carry on.
But real success actually requires failure.
And that’s why the world’s most successful people are actually not at all afraid of failing. They’re quite happy to put themselves out on a limb taking regular risks.
So how do you remove a fear of failure?
What is Fear Setting?
One option is to try fear setting. This is a technique that was first popularized by Tim Ferris in his book The Four Hour Workweek.
The general idea is to ‘set’ your fears in the same way that you would ‘set’ your goals.
This way you turn those abstract and vague fears into things that are more concrete and real. To do this, make a list of those fears and contingencies.
Planning on trying something new? Then write down everything that could go wrong and why you’re afraid of it.
Next, write down all the ways you might deal with those things going wrong. And write down how likely each of those things is to go wrong in the first place.
On the face of it, that might sound like it would make matters worse but in fact the opposite is true. That’s because, writing down your fears and making them ‘real’ often robs them of their power.
More so when you have a plan in place for how you would deal with them. And you realize that they’re actually quite unlikely to be a problem in the first place.
An Example
If you were thinking of finding a new job you might have the following fears:
You will:
*lose your current job and end up with no money
*not enjoy your new job
*end up leaving your family without a steady income
But how likely are each of these things and how could you make them less of a problem? For instance, could you not survive on savings for a little while?
Would you not be able to get help from parents if it came down to it? Couldn’t you look for work without leaving your current job?
And isn’t it quite likely that you’d actually be able to get work back with your old employer if things went wrong?
The fears tend to be somewhat unfounded. Fear setting allows us to see that and as a result makes things a lot less scary.
JohnK 7-17-2023
chiforyourself.com
Overheard: “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them”
~Andre Gide
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