Fear Of Failure; What To Do When You Fail
Everybody likes the idea of a big win but many have a fear of failure. What if you take a chance, stick your neck out, and it doesn’t work out? What do you do when you fail?
The fear of failure is big within people. It’s an idea that keeps millions in their boxes, afraid to take a chance on themselves.
Failure is a word with a mental construct attached that inspires millions to sameness and mediocrity. This mental construct comes from a overdeveloped need for support and acceptance drilled into us from a young age.
Generally I don’t like using the word failure, because it implies the end. The wonderful thing about being human is that we get a choice of where the end is.
In reality is there is no end, unless we say so.
If Henry Ford hadn’t kept going in the early days despite ridicule, we would never have seen the Ford car. It’s been much the same with almost every great man you could name. He kept plugging when everybody said his chances of making first base were nil. You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.-Babe Ruth (The Rotarian Magazine 1940)
Most of us believe that failure is real, that it can happen and that we have no control over it. We believe it can happen to anyone at any time and the avoidance of it is somewhat of a black art.
To try, is to believe in a version of ourselves way above the standard working model for life. To fail is to lose this higher concept of ourselves.
We are taught by our parents, teachers and societal leaders that to fail is dishonourable. It may not be openly communicated this way but the meaning is heavily implied.
We are taught not to take chances and to do what we are told. We are taught to take the safe option, join the workforce, save for the future, don’t take risks, to be robotic.
So for those of us who take a chance, brave the unknown and fail, often times there is fall from grace which can become almost too much to handle.
The Double Barrelled Misconception
The fear of failure comes out of a double misconception of the actual reality of things. The truth is that this double misconception is just an idea in our minds and all we need to do to get different results is change the idea.
Misconception #1; The Illusion of Time
Time is just an idea. It doesn’t exist. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do. You’ll be dead someday soon so you’d just better get busy doing whatever you want because you can’t lose.
Whenever I get into the concept of time and it’s illusory nature I always get a counter argument as to why I’m full of shit and how things wouldn’t decay and we wouldn’t grow old and die if there were no time.
Pointing out that things decay is not a reasonable argument. If you believe in time, then it is merely that your point of perception, your psychic focal point is too narrowly focused.
Long story short; Time is a linear explanation, a linear measurement, for that which is a multidimensional phenomena more helpfully explained as a cycle of energy with an infinite number of possible outcomes.
The concept of time is a convenience, which allows us get things done here, that’s it. It is woefully inaccurate resulting in us having to readjust the scale every four years by removing a full day from our calendar.
There are no lines, or points existent in the universe. They are concepts, they are not reality. We are led to believe that time is the linear passage of something along given points, when in fact it’s not linear at all.
Actually it’s not a thing we can even talk about.
There is a universal field, and there are cycles of energy continually passing through “points” or “moments” of perception in the field. Fundamentally we are this energy and we each have control over our points of focus in the field.
Where these points of focus overlap, we have shared experiences.
With our thoughts we can choose to launch into a “future” or a “past” scenario. Our experience is then influenced by this point of focus. In reality all there is, is now. Nothing else.
We create a new “now” when we focus our thoughts. We can recreate the “past” by focusing on previous experiences, or we can create the “future” by focusing our thoughts on a something that has not happened yet.
When we focus our thoughts on things we don’t want, things we fear, then we’re gonna get that, or we’ll get some derivative of that.
When we focus our thoughts on things we do want then we’re gonna get that, or we’ll get some derivative of that.
Fear of failure is an irrational focus of attention on a given set of unfavorable events that has not happened yet.
Anticipation of success is focus of attention on a given set of favourable events that has not happened yet
Either way, we get to choose.
Misconception #2; Belief In A Force Outside Us
There is no force outside of us secretly determining our future. There is no force outside us playing roulette with our lives, deciding on the spin of the wheel who gets the prize and who doesn’t.
The truth is we get to decide.
At a fundamental level we are vibrational. Everything in the physical universe including your physical body is a complex mass of quantum vibrational signals.
We are consciousness, and we get to choose the vibration we operate on. Once we choose, then resonance kicks in and the people who are at our level of vibration begin to enter our experience.
Those who do not align with us begin to disappear. If you give someone your attention they are going to stay in your experience. If you don’t give them your attention they will not.
You cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, you can not get good things to happen when you are in a bad place, emotionally speaking. It’s a square peg in a round hole, it’s just never going to happen.
If you want to experience success in what you are doing then all you need to do is stay completely focused on the creation of the result you want with total assuredness regardless of circumstances.
If you are fearful or anxious of something unsavory coming about then you’re asking for it. Get your mind off it. Get your mind focused on what you want and you are bound to make it happen.
If you sit on the fence, doubt your ability to create the desired result, you are basically sending out mixed messages and you will receive mixed results.
What To Do When You Fail
I think failure at one level or another is inevitable for most of us on the way to success. In fact if you examine it you will see that every day we have micro wins and losses.
Trying to avoid the contrast is a waste of energy, and in fact doesn’t serve us. To know the good we’ve got to experience the bad.
To realise success we’ve got to experience failure. We can’t experience one without the other. There’s got to be contrast, how else do we form an idea of better things?
What all this is, is experience. There is in reality no such thing as failure, that’s why I don’t like using the word (you wouldn’t think it would you given the number of times I’ve used it in this article!)
You only fail when you stop.
If you’ve experienced failure and it’s got you paralysed then here’s what I suggest you try.
- Quit banging the drum! You experienced it now it’s time to get over it. Dust yourself off and get going again, but bear in mind; You’ve got some work to do to rid yourself of the negative association with the failure idea.
- Detail your desired end result if you have not already. Be careful not to try to add any more detail than is comfortable. Trying to force finer details because you think you should, introduces negativity and can disrupt your progress.
- Meditate daily for 15 mins. Get up at 06:00 and sit in a quiet place. Close your eyes listen to the sounds in the room and think of nothing. Let your mind focus on the sounds until you feel relaxed. This can be difficult if you’ve never done it before so seek help if you need it.
- Visualise your desired end result every day after meditation. Writing it each day can help hugely. This is not to try convince the universe, but rather to convince yourself of what you desire. Eventually it will replace your negative thought pattern.
- Get a card and write on it a mantra. Keep it in your pocket a recite the mantra as often as you can throughout the day. Here’s one that I use “I am a successful businessman, people seek me out to do business”.
- Associate with people who are successful. Form a Mastermind or join one in your area. Do whatever it takes to stay motivated and in the right frame of mind. Associating with like minded people is a great way to do this.
Failure, or negative experience, (that might be a better term) serves us short term in that it allows us form a picture of something better than what we currently have.
As soon as that picture of better is formed, then that’s where our attention needs to go. The more we amplify the failure experience by giving it our attention, the larger it grows and the more predominent it becomes.
Round and round, bigger and bigger it gets…
That’s why many of us fail over and over again. We carry with us this idea from a previous experience. Eventually it can become so unbearable that we either give up, or we become so tired of how it has been, that we reverse the trend.
It works the other way too. When we experience the positive results we actually set out to, then we can keep that momentum going. Success breeds success.
What are you going to do with it?
Originally published at larrygmaguire.com on October 4, 2015.
Howdy, I’m Larry, Writer & Artist. Thanks for taking the time to read my stuff. I write short stories about the ordinary lives of people and the challenges they face. My stuff can be edgy, hard hitting, and sometimes controversial, but never contrived. If that’s your bag you can Sign-up To Sunday Letters Here.
