How do I overcome fear of failure?

[InterruptReQuest]

My fear of failure has been getting in the way of most things that I actually care about doing. On the surface this fear appears as procrastination. Forcing myself to do something (which is the most common advice I've heard) doesn't work at all for me, and in fact it might make things worse. I actually want to figure out the root cause and fix that. The problem is that I don't know what the cause is (in my case) and what to do about it once I find it. I believe it might be something that's pretty deep in my subconscious mind, which might be why I'm having hard time figuring out the origin or this fear.

[LastThursday]

@InterruptReQuest it seems like you could figure out two things.

First, each situation you're in is unique. To fail at something you must know what the desired outcome is for that particular situation. Most of the time, you're a winner, because a lot of goals are easy to achieve or familiar to you. I'm sure you're not fearful of winning? Occasionally you will fail. Maybe because you didn't put enough planning or effort in, or you didn't have the skills or knowledge, or you took on too much. Or just blind bad luck. Maybe even other people you were relying on didn't do their bit.

Second, who is judging your failure at something? Either it comes from yourself or from other people. If it comes from yourself, then your fear of failure is a fear of your own judgement - you can work on this then. If it comes from someone else, then you should ask yourself: "Why do I care about this person's judgement?". Also, you should look at the goals you're trying to achieve, and ask if you're doing it for yourself or just to please others - different people have different motivations.

When you're trying to achieve anything, it's always an opportunity to learn something new. Whether you fail or win, you will still learning something. And you will apply that new learning to other things in your life; nothing is ever wasted.

There is something to be said for taking on goals that motivate you and are aligned with your values. That will overcome any fear you have.

Edited February 19, 2021 by LastThursday

[Abdelghafar]

Watch this video where a Psychiatrist helps this guy to overcome his fear of failure and over-analysis. Hope it helps.

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Abdelghafar

[Nahm]

 

The knower never sees the dream, through what the knower knows,

common is the sense unseen, yet just before the nose. 

From that which claims begins and ends; a middleman exposed,

the failures, strifes, and Voldemort’s; were better left untold. 

 

In gridlocks of the webs my weaves; creators sit so still,

resolve it seems, springs not of thee; if neither did this chill. 

‘What can’t be claimed need not be tamed’, is such a bitter pill,

the knower has such foolness; yet emptied, love would fill. 

 

Of days of credit running low; grow piles of what to do,

of praise & blame create your game, not for who; for you.

In dirt without condition, your seed will grow so true,

fear not of conjecture; oops, I meant you-know-who.  

 

[Abdelghafar]

11 minutes ago, Nahm said:

 

The knower never sees the dream, through what the knower knows,

common is the sense unseen, yet just before the nose. 

From that which claims begins and ends; a middleman exposed,

the failures, strifes, and Voldemort’s; were better left untold. 

 

In gridlocks of the webs my weaves; creators sit so still,

resolve it seems, springs not of thee; if neither did this chill. 

‘What can’t be claimed need not be tamed’, is such a bitter pill,

the knower has such foolness; yet emptied, love would fill. 

 

Of days of credit running low; grow piles of what to do,

of praise & blame create your game, not for who; for you.

In dirt without condition, your seed will grow so true,

fear not of conjecture; oops, I meant you-know-who.  

 

Nice.

[InterruptReQuest]

19 hours ago, Abdelghafar said:

Watch this video where a Psychiatrist helps this guy to overcome his fear of failure and over-analysis. Hope it helps.

 

There was definitely some useful stuff in the video.

I also started looking into releasing repressed negative emotions, which might very likely contribute in this problem I have. I just have to find a way for releasing them that works for me.

[Epikur]

Like with most habits I would start very small. Do little things where you fail at them. It could be like you have a journal. You give yourself 1 minute or more to do an action. When you fail at it you make a note. This way you are collecting failures and you get used to it. So you become good at failing and the emotions that come with it.

On another perspective you might have unresolved issues. That needs reflexing. That might be a long process. For that you might have to build habits like meditation.

[Abdelghafar]

On 20/02/2021 at 5:27 PM, InterruptReQuest said:

There was definitely some useful stuff in the video.

I also started looking into releasing repressed negative emotions, which might very likely contribute in this problem I have. I just have to find a way for releasing them that works for me.

Like @Epikur said, Journalling & Meditation is a way of releasing repressed energy of fear and anger. This is a Meditation video, it's also quite brief and non-hardcore so that you can start little by little. Follow Dr.K and enjoy unloading that heavy weight off your shoulders.

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Abdelghafar

[PepperBlossoms]

@InterruptReQuest To stop fearing, could try to stop getting scared, nervous, or fearing stuff.  In some cases, the fear could be a survival strategy such as fear of driving off a cliff when driving along a cliff.  Could take a look at what fear is helpful and what fear is not helpful and then make it so that you can get rid of the non-helpful fear while keeping the helpful fear.  What are the particular outcomes for the situation and is fear something that is going to help get me the outcome that I want? 

[Liz55]

I can relate to what you are saying. It is such a vicious cycle isn’t it? And leaves you often deflated and disappointed in your so called laziness. 
What has helped me many times has been to sit in the fear, not fight it, and enquire with myself when have I felt this before, how far back, what were the circumstances and who did I not want to be judged by? 
My expectations of myself came from the conditioning of the expectations and need to please my parents in order to be loved. 
We all come with baggage and before I could even begin to contemplate the concepts and teachings of actualised.org and see that none of it was real, I had to first do lots of self inquiry. An ongoing process. The pain of turning into my fear as well as all other repressed emotions, has helped me see the illusion of it. 
Most of my ‘depression’ has been ‘repression’. 

There are many roads that lead to home and I took this path. It will no doubt be different for you.
Thank you for being honest and vulnerable. This is a great forum to do that.  

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Liz55
I wanted to acknowledge his reply about releasing negative emotions

[Setzer901]

@InterruptReQuest

From my experience, fear of failure is usually because of a fear of dashed hopes. 

You may have built a dream life in your head. But you fear that your dream life will be shattered by working on your goals. All your castles will crumble if you actually work towards your goals - and fail. You'll be left with just ruins and no castle to prop your hopes to. 

You may also fear spending putting in all your time and energy for something that doesn't work out (aka a false castle) 

There are of course deeper roots why you even need the castle. Maybe you need the castle to feel worthy. Or you need a castle because you like living luxuriously. You need to contemplate this for yourself. 

And yes, you need to let go of any repressed energy holding you back. It may take time, though. As a part-time coach, I've seen some people let go of their blocks faster, and some take a few weeks. Even with the most powerful techniques. Depends on the layers of repression. 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Setzer901

[InterruptReQuest]

14 hours ago, Setzer901 said:

@InterruptReQuest

You may also fear spending putting in all your time and energy for something that doesn't work out (aka a false castle) 

...

And yes, you need to let go of any repressed energy holding you back. It may take time, though. As a part-time coach, I've seen some people let go of their blocks faster, and some take a few weeks. Even with the most powerful techniques. Depends on the layers of repression. 

I can definitely say that's true for me. I am slightly worried that what I believe to be the thing I want to do in life doesn't work out for one reason or another.

Do you have any suggestions on good ways to remove these blocks? I've been doing a guided meditation for this, but I don't know yet how well it works.

[ted73104]

Meditation would be a very long term solution. I think there is a more direct method, though it would also take time to implement.

The direct method is just to be spontaneous to the world, meaning you should just simply be yourself most of the time. Don't worry about "failing", just let the fail happen. And when you fail, you can just be emotional and feel bad about it. Feel in the pain of failing very consciously, and from time to time when you pause to think about the failure, perhaps you'll be able to see that the fail is not a failure at all. Maybe the fail was just based on some goddamn should requirement that you could get rid of all along.

Forcing yourself to meet some should statement is just like banging your head on a wall, a total zero-sum game. It might be what you have to do in certain situations (for survival), but I think you know it doesn't work in the end.

Of course this method is not easy and very scary. But only when you can love/embrace and feel totally OK with exactly what you are right now can you really move forward.

[Setzer901]

@InterruptReQuest

To remove the blocks, you need to heal the aspects of yourself that are blocking you. You need to integrate parts of your system. Look into something like shadow work to help you with the process. Leo's booklist has a book on shadow work, I believe (though I haven't read the book myself). 

Basically, you need to access the part of yourself causing these blocks, understand what its role in your psyche is, and integrate it with your system. 

Find someone who can heal you using shadow or parts work. These issues can be harder to work with by yourself. 

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Setzer901

[InterruptReQuest]

@Setzer901

I have taken a look at shadow work before and have identified few things (although I don't know if they are related to this issue). I'm still trying to figure out a good way for me to integrate them, though.

[InterruptReQuest]

I just discovered that the fear I have been feeling might actually be coming from success, not failure.

Long story short, several months ago I heard of a term "fear of your own potential". Back then I didn't think much of it, but today it popped back in to my mind as a result of other things I was thinking about. So I decided to actually read what it was about and I realized that people that fear success often don't consciously know it and often appears as procrastination and fear of failure.

I think I'll do a bit more research into this subject and plan a suitable approach for correcting it.

[vander]

It could be due to how you handled failure before?

If nothing else works, just ask yourself what's the worst that could happen if you did fail. More often than not the result of failure is not death nor long-term damage to reputation or anything like that. If you're embarrassed in any way it's usually short-term or not as bad as you think. But then again even embarrassment or being made fun of for failure only works when you care about it. When you're the first making fun of yourself or even laughing along when people make fun of you for it you're no longer in the spotlight.

 

So think about all the bad things that could happen if you do fail and try to prepare yourself for those in such a way that they lose their power over you when they do happen.

[InterruptReQuest]

4 hours ago, vander said:

But then again even embarrassment or being made fun of for failure only works when you care about it. When you're the first making fun of yourself or even laughing along when people make fun of you for it you're no longer in the spotlight.

That's true, but it's easier said than done. I know "logically" that I shouldn't care, but getting the message down to the subconscious level is something that I haven't managed to do (can you even do that?). I don't know if you can truly not care unless you manage to do that.

[nistake]

@InterruptReQuest This is called the upper limiting problem.

If you want to read a book that is dedicated to this issue, check this out:

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Leap-Conquer-Hidden-Level/dp/0061735361

[Spence94]

On 28/02/2021 at 7:12 AM, Tim Ho said:

@InterruptReQuest 

There is really no failure or success.  There are just causes and effects.  

 

 

 

Nice