Are You Afraid of Failure? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Be

Is failure something to be feared or embraced? From the time we are young, our parents and teachers impress upon us the importance of being successful in school, and later on, at work. We are told that failing means that we aren’t smart enough or dedicated enough to reach our goals, but this couldn’t be further from the truth! In fact, failure can actually make you more successful in life – here’s why

Reasons to stop fearing failure

Fear isn’t always bad. If you enjoy bungee jumping, for example, you’re following a fear that thrills you. But not all fears are beneficial or rational. There are some things in life you shouldn’t be afraid of, and it doesn’t make sense to dwell on them. Take failure, for example It is a part of any success story and trying something new means making mistakes along the way. With time and patience, anything can happen!

There are no failures, only learning experiences

They say failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. There’s some truth to that, but it doesn’t mean you should automatically accept your failures with a woe is me attitude. Accepting failure without introspection is counter-productive. It means you don’t understand what you did wrong or how you can do better next time. It also doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take action if things aren’t working out for you. More often than not, we are our own worst enemies when it comes to success in life and business.

Fear breeds complacency

As Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing, Sometimes courage means simply doing what you have to do, even though you’re afraid. Fear is a natural emotion and humans are wired to avoid pain and discomfort. But it can also hold us back from living our best lives—whether that means hitting a goal like losing weight or writing a book or making more money, fear often gets in our way. If there’s something you’ve been avoiding because of fear, stop telling yourself that being afraid is silly or unproductive. Remember: The only real failure is not trying at all.

Trying new things means taking risks

The trick, however, is to remember that failures are often just stepping stones to success. In order to find out what works for you, you have to try things that might not work first. No one hits a home run on their first swing in baseball. They have to fail many times before they do it right. By trying and failing we slowly build up knowledge and skills that eventually make our successes much more likely – even inevitable. Fear of failure can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you’re afraid of messing up, you might very well mess up because your fear caused you to hesitate or miss opportunities. You shouldn’t let fear dictate your decisions in life! Rather than being afraid of failure, be excited about it – as it’s inevitable anyway!

Attempting something new is exhilarating

It makes you feel alive and gives you a rush that is addictive. It’s also scary, uncertain, and nerve-wracking. In fact, failure can often be more terrifying than success. It’s natural to wonder what you’re getting yourself into and whether or not you have what it takes to succeed. That being said, there is absolutely no reason why failure should stop you from trying something new or different. The thing about failure is that many times we don’t actually fail – we just give up too early on our path to success; it takes time for anything worthwhile to develop and make itself known to us. Success does not happen overnight – it happens over time with dedication, hard work, and persistence.

New ideas come from outside influences and the unfamiliar

I read an interesting quote from Elon Musk that I wanted to write about: When you’re new in business, you don’t know what you don’t know. Being ignorant is not a choice; it’s mandatory. So your best bet is to be as smart and curious as possible, to learn as much as possible, and to recognize and seek out disconfirming evidence. That way, when you make mistakes—and with new ventures, you will make mistakes—at least they are learning experiences.

Taking risks means you have more to gain than lose

If you take risk after risk after risk without fail, then you get to earn massive rewards. This is where most people go wrong—they think that taking big risks means they have to succeed every time. And while it’s true that there are a lot of things that can go wrong if you gamble, there are also a lot of things that can go right. So what do successful people do differently? They accept failure as part of life. When you think about it, everything in life involves some sort of risk; we only run into problems when we let fear get in our way and make us not take action toward our goals. When we strive for something and fail, we learn from our mistakes—and then get closer to success next time around!

Take chances on yourself!

Oftentimes, we worry about failure because we don’t want to feel like a loser. But life isn’t really like that: Success and failures both occur on their own timelines, whether you planned for them or not. Oftentimes, life is messy and fails to conform to your rules. Don’t get hung up on perfection; it doesn’t exist in reality anyway. Instead, take chances on yourself—you may fail spectacularly more than once in your life but you won’t learn anything without taking risks! Life isn’t meant to be lived according to a plan: It should be lived in spite of one.

The struggle makes success that much sweeter

Failure and struggle are hard, but they’re also some of life’s best teachers. How do we overcome these challenges and become better at what we do? We look back on our mistakes and failures and use that experience to be better in future situations. Failures are scary, but you don’t have to fear them because they make us who we are, help us grow as people, and create opportunities for success. It takes a lot of time to get good at something—don’t let failure derail your progress; use it as motivation!

Risk tolerance depends on how you look at it

Taking a risk doesn’t necessarily mean you will fail. That is, if you approach it with a good plan and diligent execution, you won’t always make a wrong move. Successful entrepreneurs say they take risks every day; however, they also make sure that their chance of success outweighs their chances of failure. If you want to achieve something in life—whether it’s starting your own business or getting into shape—be sure to weigh risk vs. reward before making any major decisions.

Accept what you can’t change. Change what you can.

If you have no interest in learning how to manage failure, please stop reading. This is not for you. For everyone else: If you can change things and they will make you better at what you do, change them. It’s that simple. Before people who are exceptionally good at what they do get there, they failed; a lot. But failures never stopped them from trying again with a new strategy or outlook. In some cases, these mistakes made it easier for them to overcome their next challenge because it became clear which changes worked and which didn’t work so well—and what was worth trying again versus what wasn’t worth attempting more than once or twice at best.