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Fear of Failure Can Make You Successful in Life

It’s hard to imagine that the fear of failure is a good thing. We all know what happens when we fail, right? People laugh at us, they mock us, and our self-esteem takes a nosedive.

It’s no wonder that many people are afraid of even trying new things for fear of failing. But ironically enough, it may be the very fear of failure which will make you successful in life.

Human beings, as a whole, are not wired to accept failure. It’s something we tend to avoid – even if the outcome is ultimately better – because of our fear of being made fun of or losing face. In fact, research shows that most people will choose a task with a guaranteed reward over one which has only an uncertain chance of success.

This is why so many people stay in dead-end jobs and relationships – we don’t want to risk failure and the embarrassment and humiliation that comes with it. Our fear of failure makes us play safe, making decisions based on what can be learned from past experiences or what others have done before us. It prevents us from seeking new experiences and having the courage to go after what we really want.

Fear of Failure Holds You Back

The fear of failure can hold you back from starting a business, doing something that scares you or even asking someone out on a date. When faced with an opportunity, the first thing many people will do is research it; what others have done before them, how much it costs, what the return on investment is likely to be. This can be a good thing because it prevents you from wasting time and resources on something doomed to fail. But it also prevents us from following our dreams or chasing opportunities that are unique to ourselves.

If you want to achieve real success in your career, relationships or life in general, the first step is to take the fear of failure out of the equation. You don’t need to be fearless, but you do need to learn how to embrace failure and see it for what it really is – nothing more than feedback.

There are several steps you can take to become more comfortable with failure. Let’s review these 17 reasons why your fear of failure is actually a good thing…

1. Failure Can Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

Embracing the fact that you will fail from time to time will allow you to take more calculated risks and make better decisions. It will help you learn from past mistakes and minimize future risk.

2. You Can Gain Valuable Feedback from Failure

In business, failure can be a stepping stone to success. In fact, many entrepreneurs have said that their biggest breakthroughs came from making mistakes or even failing outright. Every time you fail you learn something new, and through knowledge gained in the process, your ability to make better decisions increases exponentially.

3. You Can Grow and Learn from Failure

As you gain experience and learn to embrace the lessons of failure, you will slowly become more comfortable with it. The fear of failure will slowly fade away because your experiences have taught you how to deal with it. This knowledge is invaluable because it makes future failures less likely and easier to overcome.

4. You Will Know When You Are Done Failing

I can’t tell you how many people I know who have dropped out of a course, a relationship or a job because they couldn’t deal with the inevitable failure. By learning to embrace failure as part of life, it will allow you to finish what you started instead of leaving it half done. It will also allow you to maximize your potential and pursue a career or relationship which brings out the best in you.

5. Failures Will Be Less Painful, More Frequent & Easier to Deal With

The more often something happens, the less impact it tends to have on us. The fear of failure has a powerful grip on most people, but the more you experience failure and learn to deal with it effectively, the easier it will be to overcome. With each success built upon a previous failure, you become stronger and more confident in your ability to achieve great things.

6. You Can Focus Your Energy on Creating Value, Rather Than Preventing Failure

If you spend your time and energy worrying about failure, then it is going to be difficult for you to focus on creating value instead. In business, entrepreneurs who worry about failure can become so consumed by the fear that they will not pursue any opportunities at all. In personal relationships, the fear of failure can cause someone to become a people pleaser and stop them from standing up for what is right.

7. You Will Inspire Others to be More Successful & Create Better Opportunities

When you pursue success fearlessly, it inspires those around you to do the same. In fact, entrepreneurs who embrace failure as an inevitable part of their career are more likely to acquire highly successful mentors, partners and employees who will help them achieve even greater things.

8. It Will Help You Gain a Wider Perspective on Opportunities & Failures

When you focus your energy on preventing failure, it is going to be difficult for you to see opportunities that exist right in front of you. By learning to embrace failure as part of life, you will be able to gain a broader perspective on opportunities and view them as learning experiences rather than failures.

9. You Can Plan For Failure & Improve the Chances of Success

You can’t plan for everything that might go wrong in your career or personal life, but you can take steps to reduce the risks. When you plan for failure and work out how to deal with it, the chances of success skyrocket. This allows you to focus your energy on creating value and learning from mistakes, rather than spending it worrying about whether or not something will fail.

10. You Can Become More Comfortable With Failure & Achieve Success Even Faster

Every time you fail at something, you become more comfortable with failing. Every time you succeed at something, you become even more comfortable with succeeding. By letting go of the fear of failure and embracing it as an inevitable part of your career or personal life, it will make a huge difference to the speed at which you achieve success.

11. You Will Have a Greater Sense of Freedom & Control Over Your Life

When you let go of the fear and embrace failure as part of life, it dramatically alters your perception of everything else in your life. It will give you a greater sense of freedom and allow you to take control over your career or personal milestones by planning for them instead of worrying about them.

12. You Will Find It Easier to Take Risks & Make Decisions

One of the biggest problems that individuals face is making decisions and taking risks. When you worry about failure, it can be difficult to make any decisions at all because you are too afraid of what might go wrong. By letting go of the fear and learning to embrace failure, you will find it much easier to make decisions and take risks.

13. You Will Be More Accountable For Your Own Success & Happiness

When you are afraid of failure, it is easy to point the finger at others when something goes wrong. It keeps you feeling safe, because if other people are responsible for your success or happiness then you will not have to take responsibility for it. When you let go of the fear, however, and learn to embrace failure as part of life, you will be much more accountable for your own success and happiness.

14. You Can Stop Playing It Safe & Live a Life Filled with Adventure

When you worry about failure, or prevent yourself from trying new things, you are going to end up playing it safe and living a boring, mundane life. The biggest opportunities in your personal or professional life will pass you by because you never even tried to go for them. By letting go of the fear, however, and embracing failure as a part of life, you can stop playing it safe and start living a life filled with adventure.

15. It Will Help You Build an Unstoppable Team & Expand Your Network

When you learn to embrace failure as part of your personal or professional life, it will give you the chance to build an unstoppable team of mentors, partners and employees that share your vision for success. Their desire not to fail will drive them to work hard and make smart decisions, which will translate into getting the job done quickly.

16. You Can Approach Problems From Fresh Perspectives & Be More Creative

If you are worried about failing, or find yourself stuck in the same situation again and again, it makes sense that you cannot see your problems from different perspectives. By letting go of the fear, you are free to approach your problems from fresh perspectives and come up with creative solutions.

17. You Will Be More Persistent & More Likely To Achieve Your Goals

By letting go of the fear of failure you will find it much easier to persist when times get tough – even when your back is against the wall. Most other people would give up and accept defeat, but a failure can actually be a blessing in disguise because it gives you the chance to come back stronger than ever before.

Conclusion: Fear of Failure is Actually a Good Thing

If there is one thing I can tell you, it is to learn to love your failures as much as you do your successes. When you can welcome both with open arms, it will allow you to become a stronger and better version of yourself every time you fail or succeed.

Life is not a pass or fail course, you can’t win or lose at it. Sure, you might have some setbacks along the way but these are just opportunities for you to learn more about yourself and what makes you happy. The only real failure in life is regretting the chances that you didn’t take.

At the end of the day, I think we all know what it feels like to want something so badly that we are scared of actually trying for it because if we fail then our heart will be broken. But here’s the thing: when you fail in this life it’s not really failure, it’s just feedback. Yes, it can be painful to take that first step towards your goal and then discover that the road is much more difficult than you thought or that people aren’t as supportive as you thought they would be but remember there are no failures only lessons learned.

So go out there and take some risks, it’s the only way you’ll ever achieve anything great in life.

Remember, there are no failures, only lessons learned.

This blog post was written with my AI writing assistant, Jasper.

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