We all desire success but very few achieve it. To attain success, you have to challenge your beliefs, stretch yourself further than you are comfortable with and develop new habits. One of the most important things you will do in your pursuit of success is to overcome your fears.
3 of the main failures that can hold you back from pusrsuing your dreams are :
- fear of failure
- fear of rejection, and
- fear of the unknown
Tips to overcome the fear of failure
The fear of failure comes as a result of not wanting to disappoint yourself or others. This is where you keep asking yourself, what if I am not good enough? What if I do not succeed. Maybe you have tried before and failed and you keep feeling like it is going to happen again.
It is this kind of fear that makes people say they will never love again after a heartbreak, others say they will never run another business after one business venture has failed. This fear gives you a sense of hopelessness and finality when in reality you should rise up and try a thousand times over.
Learn from your failures but move on from them
To conquer the fear of failure, realize that past failures are not in any way indicators of the future. Make sure to learn from your failures but move on from them. Your mistakes don’t define you.
Every time you try out something and it fails, look back and ask yourself what lessons you have learned from that. Apply these lessons in your future endeavors and you will be sure on your way to success.
Embrace failure as part of success.
Do not believe the common misconception that failing is a bad thing. Failure is not the opposite of success, it is part of it. Your mistakes will teach you important life lessons, don’t obsess so much with the failure that you miss the lessons.
Do it scared
Acknowledge that you are afraid, but move forward anyway. Do not wait until you are no longer afraid to take action. If you do that, you will get stuck. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is going on despite the fear. Just keep going and refuse to give up on your goals and dreams.
How to overcome the fear of rejection
The fear of rejection is one of the deepest and far-reaching human fear. There is an innate need in every human being to feel accepted and valued. A desire to belong, be loved and be approved of.
When these needs are not met, we feel rejected. Sometimes rejection comes from the people closest to us, those that we expect the most support from but they do not offer it.
Develop resilience to keep going after rejection
The truth is, you will face rejection many times in your life, and it is easy to coil back and not reveal you’re true self because you don’t want to face rejection. However, the fear of rejection can be an impediment to your success and growth. You have to develop the resilience to get up even after you have been rejected.
Create your tribe of people whom you trust
To be able to meet your need for belonging and acceptance, it is important to have an inner circle of people you trust. These are a select number of people (likely very few) who understand, value and support you even through adversity.
Read The three types of people you need in your life.
Tips to overcome the fear of rejection:
- Accept that you are different- there are times people will reject you because you don’t work or make decisions like them. It is okay to be different, their rejection is based on their beliefs and interpretations and has nothing on you. To be successful, you do not have to always fit in, fitting in is overrated.
- Build confidence in yourself, have faith in your capabilities and values and define who you are. Have a high self-esteem and hold yourself to higher values, as you focus on working on yourself rejection will just be a little obstacle in your journey to success.
3. Fear of the unknown
The fear of the unknown has paralyzed many people and prevented them from pursuing their dreams. 
You want to start a business but you want to have everything, know all the tiny details, know whether it will succeed or fail and so on.
However, there is no way of knowing everything before you start so you become so afraid of not knowing that you drop the idea altogether. Can we agree that there is absolutely no way of knowing everything that is going to happen in their future? Heck, there is even no way to know for sure everything that will happen tomorrow.
There will always be something you don’t know about what you are getting into, do it anyway.
It is okay to be afraid, just don’t let the fear of the unknown stop you from getting what you really want. As you wait to know everything and keep postponing, someone else is going to implement your idea and by the time you become confident enough it will be too late. Don’t wait for perfection, focus on progress.
So get yourself unstuck and hit the road. Do your very best with what you have available at the moment, take action and the vision will unfold and get clearer as you go. It is Zig Ziglar who said, you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
You can find more resources on fear here
Have you been able to conquer your fears? Which of these fears do you need to deal with in order to be successful? Let me know in the comments.
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Love and light,
Debbie – Streaks of Light
I’m pretty much the worlds biggest introvert, and I can relate to the fear of rejection a lot more than I’d like to admit. Even to the point that I try and avoid social media in all forms. It kind of helps me to know that I’m not the only one. I guess I need to not care if some people disagree with me. Thanks for writing the article.
I am an introvert myself and I totally understand you, Steve. However, people’s opinions about you do not define who you are. Once you build confidence in yourself, you no longer have to worry whether others agree with you or not. You can check out this article I wrote here about building confidence.
Awesome insight, Debbie 🙂 I really appreciate your efforts here, being a former stay-at-home (single) mom myself (my kids are all grown now), I “learned the hard way” in most of this. And too true that, bottom line, if you do not value yourself the least hint of rejection can knock you over. God bless you for your hard work here! oxoxo
Thank you, Lynette.
Debbie,
I have been able to conquer fear several times in my business life. I wanted to become a supervisor where I worked for 15 years, I was told I was not qualified because I had no business background or college. I went to night school for a year and reapplied the next time it came around, I was not chosen again.
I was told the person chosen was more qualified. I went back to school. The next time it came around, I did get the job, it took four years from start to getting the job. I did well and was chosen to advance to the next position in another state within two years.
You have to believe in yourself and find out what it takes to get what you want to exceed.
John
I love your comment, John. Such a powerful testimony of what overcoming fear and believing in yourself can do for someone. Your resilience is so admirable and necessary for success. As you said, “you have to believe in yourself and find out what it takes to get what you want”
Thank you so much for your comment, so so powerful.
Thank you for your informative post! Conquering our personal fears can be quite a daunting task. In my experience embracing our failures is the key to success. An honest egoless inventory of failures can provide an excellent tool for changing negative patterns. This can lead to a true acceptance of self.
That’s right, Stacy. Conquering our fears is not easy but it is necessary. Thank you for your input on this.
Your article is very good. I think everybody in their life has to eventually deal with the fear of failure and rejection. You are right that each person has to develop an inner confidence in themselves and their capabilities to overcome these fears. Every person probably has been rejected by the opposite sex or fear losing their job or business. But when you reach that low point that is when you have to pick yourself off the ground and continue to fight or stay positive.
Very well said, Roger. I wouldn’t add anything to that.
I appreciate you taking time to read and leave a comment.
Fear of failure is a huge one for me. I’m super scared that I will “fail” at finding a job or fail at my blog. Great article
I can totally relate, Janet. I personally decided that I will not focus on my fear. I wake up every day thinking about how to be successful. Choose to focus on positivity and replace the thoughts of fear with positivity. At the end of the day, even when we make mistakes we learn. I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
These are all important! Such good advice, thank you for writing this post.
Yes they are, Kathryn. Let’s overcome these fears and attain success.
I love this post!!! The fear of failure was the hardest for me to overcome but you’re right, it’s the only way you are going to be successful!
It is not easy to overcome our fears, but it is necessary. I am glad you were able to overcome it. Thanks for your input on this.
I really enjoyed your post. I agree that the fear of failure, rejection and the unknown is why most people will never live to their full potential. It is nothing wrong with being afraid, do it anyway.
Thank you, Ramona. I am glad you enjoyed the post.