Tip #4: You’re Too Old To Cry, But It Hurts Too Much To Laugh

Make sure your speakers are on! The audio automatically starts!

People allow failure to get the better of them emotionally, and it stops them from achieving their dreams. The first important step in weathering failure is learning not to personalize it – making sure that your failure does not make you a failure. For many people the pain of failure leads to fear of failure. That’s when people get stuck in the fear cycle. If fear overcomes you, it’s almost impossible to fail forward.

Fear – Inaction – Inexperience – Inability

Fear creates inaction. Because the person doesn’t act, he doesn’t gain personal experience, which is the key to learning and overcoming future obstacles. The lack of experience ultimately feeds and increases the fear.

The inaction that results from being stuck in the fear cycle takes on many forms:
1. Paralysis
Some people stop trying to do anything that might lead to failure. The worst danger we face is the danger of being paralyzed by doubts and fears.

2. Procrastination
Other people maintain the hope of progress but never get around to following through. Procrastination steals a person’s time, productivity, and potential. There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

3. Purposelessness
There’s nothing more useless than someone who comes to the end of the day and congratulates themself, saying “Well, I made it through the day without screwing up.” Rather than pursue worthy objectives, they avoid the pain of making mistakes.

A person in the fear cycle exhibits additional negative side effects…
Self Pity: They feel sorry for themselves.

Excuses: A person can fall down many times, but they won’t be a failure until they say that somebody pushed them. The person who makes a mistake, then offers an excuse for it, adds a second mistake for their first.

Misused Energy: A person going in too many directions at once doesn’t get anywhere.

Hopelessness: Continual fear and inaction rob a person of hope. The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of your life is gone.

People who want to get out of the fear cycle believe that they have to eliminate fear. You can’t avoid fear and you can’t wait for motivation to get you going. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway.

Motivation is not going to strike you like lightening. Forget motivation. Just do it. After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep doing it.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. To overcome fear and break the cycle, you have to be willing to recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience. Experience eventually brings competence, and you make fewer mistakes. You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.

When it comes to getting over the emotional hurts of failure, it really doesn’t matter how good or bad your personal history is. The only thing that matters is that you face your fear and get moving. Do that, and you give yourself the opportunity to learn how to fail forward.

YOUR STEP FOUR:
Take Action And Reduce Your Fear
What objective are you most afraid of tackling?
Write down all your fears associated with the activity.
Examine your list and accept the fact that you’re afraid. Determine the first step you can take to get started on achieving that objective.
Do it. If you fail at it, do it again. Keep trying until you accomplish that first step.

Reply below to share your experiences. How did you feel when you took action to reduce your fear by applying one of the four methods suggested? What do you think about this method? Let us know! =)

Today’s Success Tip…
Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of. -Viktor Frankel

With You On Your Journey

NOTE: This is the 4th Mindset Tip in the series of a chapter by chapter summary of the book, “Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success” by John C. Maxwell.