Fighting the Fear of Failure (FOF)

Can we all be real for a second? (that’s more of a question for you, I’m always real)

We all have ambition…ambition to do great things.

Things that can effect change on many levels.

However, may times, we don’t event try to make a move to get the ball rollin’.

For most of us, we are a worried about a few things.

Being embarrassed if we cant achieve the goal on the first try (or first few tries.)

Disappointing friends and family with our failures

Giving the same friends and family to doubt or mock you if you don’t succeed right away.

Maybe some other event happened that gave you a touch of PTSD.

That’s when you start to doubt yourself, and start your own stinkin’ thinkin’

Thinking you are worthless, or not good enough, or you are reminded about times in childhood when you learned some truly bad habits that helped to develop your stinkin’ thinkin’

There are more reasons…more that I would even want to list, but they all come down to the same basic principle.

Fear of Failure.

I like to call it FOF. I call it FOF for 2 reasons.

1. FOF faster to say than “fear of failure”
2. The word FOF sounds ridiculous, and that makes me laugh.

The 2nd reason is more important than you may realize.

Ya see home boy, if we look at FOF from an objective stand point, its a silly fear.

However, we are human, therefore we are not logical.

So things that should not scare us, often times do.

We’ve heard of strange phobias like fear of the dark, fear of small things, fear of clowns.

Seriously, look this up on google, I cant make this up!

Anyway the sound of FOF reminds me that what I’m afraid of is silly.

Why? Because I know that I probably wont be good at something when I try it for the first time.

But more importantly, I can only truly fail if I gave up!

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, did he get it right on his first try?

When WD-40 was first invented, was it done on the first formula they made? (hint, the name is a hint on how many formulas they developed before getting it right)

With that said, what can you do about FOF…I mean besides laughing at it?

Here are some tips that are pretty much fool proof.

Perhaps someone has worked thru this with you before.

Its an exercise from Tim Ferriss.

First, get a blank sheet of paper, and divide it into 3 columns, but leave yourself some space at the top to write down the goal that gave you FOF.

1. In the first column, write down all of the things that could go wrong should your attempt truly fail. Think of the most terrible things possible. Go to town.
2. In the second column, figure out ways that you can over come each possibility of those bad consequences from happening.
3. In the third column, think of how you would recover from each of the scenarios you imagined and wrote in the first column.

This will show you that things are never as bad as they seem, and that you are truly capable of great things!

Never let some made up possibility scare you away from your dreams…from the life that you deserve!

Now, its time to take action!