It’s confession time, friend. Can you spare a minute? I am a recovering perfectionist. And by recovering, I mean I struggle every single day with perfectionism. I’m a black and white thinker. Something is right, or it’s not. A task is complete, or incomplete. A thing is either good, or it’s bad. There are no gray areas, and 90% is not good enough. The problem is that this perfectionism leaves no room at all for mistakes. Without mistakes there can be no growth. If everything has to be perfect then anything less than perfect is failure. The fear of failure can stop you in your tracks and keep you from feeling successful…at anything. And so today I desperately want to talk to you about how to overcome the fear of failure.
WHAT THE FEAR OF FAILURE DOES
The fear of failure keeps you stuck. It keeps you from moving forward in life, it keeps you from reaching goals, it keeps you from achieving your dreams. The fear of failure robs you of joy, of rest, and of peace. It keeps you in a constant state of anxiety: “Is it done? Was it enough? Was it right? No, I missed something. I failed.”
The fear of failure holds you captive. You know your dreams, you set goals, you create the checklists and actionable steps necessary to complete your task. But when the fear of failure takes hold, you become immobilized, paralyzed by what ifs: “What if no one agrees? How will I cope if I’m rejected? Is it all just a huge waste of time? What if no one cares?” Before you know it, the fear of failure has you questioning your every move, your motives, and leaves you with no other option except failure.
WHAT THE FEAR OF FAILURE LOOKS LIKE
The fear of failure can look like different things to different people. To some it looks like completing the same task every single day. I once knew a woman who mopped her entire house every single day. For her, not to do so was failure.
To some, like myself, it looks like a never-ending to do list. True story: I once had a friend ask me how I kept my house clean. She asked me to send her my cleaning checklist; my cleaning schedule if you will. When I sent it to her she laughed and said, “Okay, funny. Now send me the real one.” What I realized was that my weekly cleaning checklist was what most people consider spring cleaning; baseboards, window sills, window glass, carpet stains, vacuum the upholstery, mop all the floors, wipe down all the cabinets. It was a four-page list. To miss one single item, even though I had completed all other the items on all four pages, meant I had failed.
To some, it looks like a number on a scale, the number of miles run, the number of reps in a workout. It may look like the amount of time spent doing a task, the number of days to complete a project, or the way a picture hangs on the wall.
HOW THE FEAR OF FAILURE AFFECTS YOU
Let me tell you something you may not know. When I started this blog I looked at my analytics every day. One day, I would have 200 views, the next day I would have 40 views. One analytic would tell me I had great engagement, and another would tell me I had a very low percentage of engagement. This kept me on an emotional roller coaster, and it kept me from pursuing my dream of writing this blog. One day I was on cloud nine when views and engagement reports were high, and the next day I was in tears, ready to shut the whole thing down because views dropped, or engagement was low. (Never mind the fact that it was a major holiday weekend and typically people don’t read blogs during this time frame…)
The fear of failure also has kept me stagnant on a very important life goal…. for over a decade. You read that right. For more than ten years I’ve sat on something that is very important to me, because I was afraid I would fail.
HOW TO OVERCOME THE FEAR OF FAILURE
I’m not a psychologist, a therapist, and I am certainly untrained to give professional advice. But I can tell you how I am working every day to overcome the fear of failure. These are the things I have to work through every day in order to move forward, reach my goals, and achieve my dreams:
NEVER GIVE UP
Every day, wake up, determine your goals for the day. Then, pick one… or two… or three… Maybe you have ten goals for the day. Determine your most important task or tasks. Ask yourself, “If I go to bed tonight, only completing one thing (or two, or three) what is the most important?
Do this every single day. No matter the previous day’s outcome, do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
Never give up.
CONSIDER THE WORST CASE
This is a life-lesson I’ve learned from my husband. He’s my absolute hero in every way, but this one thing has taught me so much about overcoming perfectionism.
Ask yourself, “What is the worst case?” “If I don’t complete this thing, if it’s not perfect, if I don’t reach the number on the scale, if I’m rejected, if people don’t notice, if I can’t complete that long run… what is the worst that can happen?”
Most of the time, the worst case will never even occur, so why allow it to stop you from achieving your goals?
KNOW YOUR BIGGEST REGRET
I read somewhere that you should imagine you’ve come to the end of your life. What would your biggest regret be? Did you want to accomplish a big goal, write a book, sail to lands unknown?
If today were your last day, what would you regret not doing? Then, determine to not have that regret at the end of your life. Do whatever you have to do to accomplish it.
Do not allow the fear of failure to stop you from achieving your dreams. Write the book, take the trip, complete the mission. But do the thing!
WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS, YOUR DREAMS, YOUR DESIRES?
I have allowed the fear of failure to hold me back for far too long. I’ve addressed questions in my own mind like, “What if I say the wrong thing? Will people negate the things I believe to be true? What do I do if I put all the work in and nothing happens?” Well, let me tell you what I’ve determined: I have one very large regret. When I come to the end of my days, if I have not done one particular thing, I know it will be my biggest regret.
I have to step out on faith and do the things to make the dream a reality. I have to continue pursuing until I’ve achieved the dream. Never give up! Never surrender! Don’t back up, don’t back down. And if no one notices, if people don’t approve or agree, if the whole things turns out to be one gigantic flop, it will not be a failure, because I will have set out to achieve my goal, and I will have achieved it.
What are your goals? Do you have dreams you’re dreaming? What can you do today to move forward and stop the fear of failure?
You can do great things! I believe you can do whatever you set your mind to! Go get ’em!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
- PYSCOLOGY TODAY: 10 SIGNS THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE THE FEAR OF FAILURE
- THE BEAUTY OF IMPERFECTION
- LET GO OF PERFECTIONISM
