Four game-changing hacks to releasing the fear of failure

I have a feeling that the older we get and the more years that roll around, the less inclined we are to set New Year resolutions. Why? Because so often and so many times before, we haven’t stuck to them. Fear of failure (again) can stop us from not only taking action on our dreams, but even dreaming those dreams in the first place. But without dreams - what is life about? Without growth, variety, challenge, opportunity… what’s the point? We can’t let fear of failure hold us back so here’s 4 game-changing hacks to release that pesky old belief that we won’t succeed, and reignite our promise and potential.

1. Ask yourself if you’re actually scared of success

We often blame fear of failure for us not achieving our goals and dreams, but there’s an equally evil fear that pervades our society - especially amongst us high achievers. Fear of success. While fear of failure is often very conscious (we can catch ourselves doubting our abilities or achievements), fear of success can be very unconscious. In fact, you might unwittingly and unknowingly sabotage your own efforts and plans to achieve your goals and dreams and only realise 6 or 12 months (or even 10 years!) later. Fear of success can come from thinking people won’t like you or resent you if you succeed. Or worrying if you reach your goal, you’ll then have to dream even bigger or you’ll get landed with even more responsibilities and work and targets… and you’re already exhausted. It can come from a belief that you’ll change - that you won’t be you anymore. Or even that if you get everything you want, there’ll be nothing left to look forward to in life. Just identifying and naming the root cause of your confidence block is half the work and starts to loosen the grip of this limiting belief, so really check in with yourself if it’s a fear of failure or a fear of success that’s holding you back now.

2. Forgive yourself and others for past mistakes

In my new book, Pioneer Your Career Change (buy it on Amazon here), there is an entire chapter on forgiveness and letting go. You can’t move on and paint a new future if you’re still trapped by the chains of the past. If you’ve failed in the past, there’s only three things you can do to stop history repeating itself: forgiving yourself and others for past mistakes, reframing the event and what it means, and taking the learnings so you don’t make the same mistake again in the future. In my book I provide three fast and easy tools you can use with yourself to help you forgive and forget: an empathy float where you drop into the other person’s body and understand the situation from their inner world, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, or tapping), and cord cutting. All are based on understanding, forgiveness and release and are so powerful for giving yourself a new start to success.

3. Surround yourself with positive people who have done it already

In Coaching, there are two principles that help you accelerate reaching your goals. If you’re in my Leading Successful Change program, you know that when we are setting a vision we want it to be “Achievable” and that one of the three ways we check this is by asking “Has someone else done it before?”. If someone else has done it already, we know it’s possible for us, too. Add to this the concept of “surrounding influences” - we are the average of the five people closest to us and unconsciously take on the patterns, beliefs and habits of the people around us - and you get a sure-fire recipe to kick fear of failure to the kerb: surround yourself with positive people who have done it already. Not only will it prove to you that what you want to achieve is possible, the mindset and energy that those people have that got them to their success will rub off on you. This could be curating your LinkedIn feed to role models, joining an inspiring and empowering community like my LSC Community, or catching up with mentors for coffee or lunch.

4. Build your inner confidence

This is always my go-to tip because building internal confidence is such a broad spectrum way to deal with any fears or beliefs, including fear of failure. I define confidence as knowing who you are, what you want, what value you bring, and what you’re worth. When you are clear on these things - and more importantly - believe them, you’ll be more willing to take the action needed for success, to resiliently push through the inevitable challenges and setbacks, and to find fulfilment in the journey as well as the achievement of your goals. Confidence is a deep knowing that you are worth it and you deserve it.

But building inner confidence isn’t so easy to do on your own. If you’d like my help, I’ll be running my free Underpaid and Overlooked Workshop from Monday 10 February where I’ll be talking more about how you can easily set and achieve your career dreams for 2025. 

CLICK HERE to register your free spot on my Underpaid and Overlooked Workshop

Lata xx