Jeremiah avoided speaking up in meetings. Instead, he let others dominate team discussions. When his boss asked him to lead a department-wide update, he declined—it cost him a promotion.
After landing the largest project her company had ever received, Maggie froze. When she didn’t deliver the first assignment by deadline, she lost the contract.
Anna feared getting crosswise with her boss if she told him she felt bored. Because she didn’t let him know, he gave the intriguing additional job duties Anna yearned for to a more outgoing coworker.
After being accepted to a Shark Tank-type opportunity to present his start up to a venture capitalist group, Luther flew to New York and made it as far as the hotel room. Knowing he’d fail because he hadn’t slept for three nights, he caught a return flight back to Anchorage.
Has a nagging whisper in your head warning you that you risk going down in flames if you attempt a challenging undertaking ever stopped you in your tracks? If so, you’ve allowed the fear of potential failure to cost you. In the workplace, fear causes many to avoid challenging assignments, not apply for “stretch” positions, keep their mouths shut in team meetings, and delay touchy but necessary conversations with their managers.
If these thoughts strike a nerve, apply these five fixes:
Own your fear. When you avoid or bury fear, it can impact your decision-making. Instead, bring your fears to the surface and challenge them. What are you afraid of and why? Would you rather avoid risk and lose your chance, or try and potentially succeed?
Own your failures. Past failures can stop us—unless we face them head-on by honestly assessing what went wrong. Failure can be a brilliant teacher when it forces you to reevaluate your strategies. When you take full responsibility for your mistakes and learn from them, you turn setbacks into detours rather than dead ends. Because you’ve learned, you’re no longer the same person who didn’t know what you needed to understand. You’re wiser.
Actively push. Does fear trap you in your comfort zone? What happens when you fear risk too much to move forward? Fear erodes confidence. Hesitation amplifies worry. When you don’t challenge yourself, you miss out on opportunities. As I wrote in “Courage is Your Partner,” chapter 4 of Navigating Conflict, https://amzn.to/3rCKoWj, you risk living your life regretting the risks you didn’t take, the words you should have spoken but swallowed, and the opportunities you let pass by. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Take a chance on yourself. If you fear taking a risk by trying something just outside your reach, take to heart how a toddler learns to walk. They learn by doing and failing. They stumble, fall, and stand up again and again. I’ll never forget one of my favorite toddlers who crawled backwards faster than I could run, and became a stunning athlete in adulthood. If you keep trying, you learn there’s no mistake that permanently defeats you.
Don’t internalize failure. Finally, sometimes things don’t go as planned. You take a risk and fail—or have you? Trying takes guts. In other words, failure doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you someone brave enough to take risks—so keep going. The world needs what you and only you have to offer. Press forward courageously and defeat the fear of failure.
© 2024, Lynne Curry
Subscribing to the blog is easy
If you’d like to get 1 to 2 posts a week delivered to your inbox (and NO spam), just add your email address below. (I’ll never sell it.) I’m glad you’ve joined this vibrant blog. Thank you!
The approaches in this post se are sensible approaches to “owning” your fears and finding ways to come out of them. Here’s some more:Take on some small responsibilities. Gradually pull out of your shell and don’t take one negative outcome as a judgment for all time. Ask for help and guidance and mentoring from someone you trust.
Excellent ideas.