The best way to overcome the fear of failure
It's time to realize your destiny
If the fear of failure has stopped you from pursuing your goals, I know exactly how you feel.
It’s scary to think about giving all your time and energy to something and have it not work out.
Sometimes it’s easier to sit on the sidelines and dream rather than risk putting your heart and soul into something and end up disappointed.
But it’s time to stop letting the fear of failure hold you back from living your purpose.
You’re so much stronger, powerful and more capable than you give yourself credit for.
And if you don’t dig deep and find the courage to go after what you really want, you risk getting to the end of your life only to realize you let fear block your destiny.
If you’re going to realize your creative potential, you need to learn how to respond to failure so it makes you more skilled, strong and resilient.
That’s what you’ll learn in today’s blog. We’ll start with the inner work — emotional and mindset, and end with the practical steps so you get the holistic approach I’m known for.
The uncomfortable truth is that if you’re going to live on the edge and pursue your biggest dreams, goals and passions, failure is something you need to get used to.
A lot of people think of success as a place where you arrive, only to live Happily Ever After.
But that’s not true.
An artist might release a record-breaking album only for their next to flop.
One blog post I write goes viral, the next might tank.
The only way to guarantee you never fail is to live a life of safety, but that’s a failure of its own kind — a failure of the willingness to be courageous and go after what you really want.
Failure isn’t necessarily bad; it’s just something that happens along the way to realize your dreams.
Failure is progress because it means you’re taking action.
Success happens when you’re willing to fail until you break through.
You’ll write to crickets until attracting an audience.
Reach out to new clients and hear no’s — or silence — until someone says yes.
Create video after video on YouTube until people find you and like what you have to say.
Along the way, you’ll learn the skills necessary to succeed, and develop the conviction and confidence that creates your success.
Like I always say — the purpose of our desires isn’t only to create a fulfilling life, but to become who we’re meant to be.
It’s not that we succeed, and then have faith, confidence and certainty.
We develop those things, and that’s what creates our success.
Why we fear failure
Failure isn’t the problem. The meaning we attach to it is. Failure only feels painful because of the stories we tell ourselves about what it means.
Once you shift through these fears and stories, failure becomes emotionally neutral, and that’s when you become unstoppable.
1. We’re afraid failure means we aren’t capable of achieving our dreams.
Falling short of a goal, or not getting results as fast as you want, doesn’t mean your dream is impossible.
Of course you’re capable of creating what you want. You wouldn’t have the dream otherwise.
Slow results are an invitation to grow. Your biggest job is to create absolute certainty that your success is inevitable.
More on this in a minute.
2. We’re afraid of facing our own self-criticism.
A lot of us are really hard on ourselves, especially when it comes to falling short of expectations.
Treating yourself with compassion while leaning into your emotions with curiosity instead of criticism allows you to understand what you’re truly afraid of.
This inner work allows you to remove the emotional charge from failure so you can learn from it and try again.
3. We’re afraid of others’ judgment.
You might not want others to see you fail, especially if deep down you don’t believe you’re capable.
Nobody wants to look dumb, but without risking it all, you won’t have the opportunity to create the life you really want.
When you believe in yourself, other people’s opinions don’t matter.
4. We’re afraid of what would happen if we succeed.
Sometimes we sabotage our success because we’re afraid of added responsibility or worry how it would change our relationships.
Like I talked about recently, sometimes we attach to an identity of struggling, and succeeding would challenge that identity.
We might struggle against fears of failure, but subconsciously cling to them simply because we don’t know who we’d be if we were successful.
We’ll explore this more deeply in my journaling club, the Mindset Membership this week.
How to respond to failure so it no longer stops you from realizing your wildest dreams
Everybody fails before they succeed. The question is — what do you want badly enough to persist until you break through?
1. Feel your feelings
This isn’t fun. But it’s the most powerful path forward. Learning to separate your emotions from the story you tell yourself about what they mean is life changing.
Learn about my signature Feeling Awareness meditation that allows you to release emotional energy.
While you feel your feelings, messages will bubble up. You’ll understand your unique web of fears, doubts, and limiting beliefs stopping you from creating the life you want.
Once you work through these things, you’ll know — you can achieve anything you put your whole heart into.
When THAT becomes your default state of being, that’s when your entire life quantum leaps into a new realm of possibility.
2. Build a new, more empowered mindset.
This might might sound woo but, when you change your mindset, you change your results.
For example, recently I spent several months selling out my coaching practice. One space filled quickly with an amazing client, but then things got quiet! I felt really frustrated, and didn’t know what to do.
But then I remembered how pre-burnout, I spent literal hours some days doing mindset work, and how confident and self-assured it made me feel, and how those feelings were reflected in my amazing results.
I also realized I was allowing myself to dwell in half-heartedness, not fully believing in myself, basically protecting myself from the pain of things potentially not working out.
So I started doing mindset work every morning, using the prompts that I share in our journaling club, The Mindset Membership.
Shortly after, the floodgates unleashed. Four people inquired after months of little interest, and I enrolled two fabulous clients within a couple days of each other!
Mindset work is mind-blowingly powerful. It still surprises me every time how effective it is.
It does help you show up differently, but also — the stories we tell ourselves about how life works become our reality.
Devoting yourself to a daily journaling practice is the most powerful thing you can do if you’re serious about monetizing your purpose.
3. From a place of confident expectation, with an empowered mindset, ask ‘what’s my next right step?’
Creating business around your truest gifts, in the unique way you’re meant to is all about taking next right step after next right step.
The energy you pour into an action influences the outcome of that action.
If you experience less than desirable results, the WORST thing is to emotionally react and take action from that place.
Instead, take a minute, work through Steps 1 and 2, and then —
From a place of curiosity, emotional detachment and knowing your success is inevitable, ask: What’s my next step?
Maybe you get an intuitive hit — oh:
I need to do this or say that differently.
I should start posting on this platform.
I should reach out to this person or find this type of community.
I should learn this skill or hire this coach.
Back to the example of filling my coaching practice, I prayed for guidance and in November, was led to an in-depth coaching program. The investment was a little out of my comfort zone, but I said yes, and it’s been exactly what I needed!
When you build a strong mindset, let that mindset guide you to the right strategy, and use your intuition to guide you the whole way, you become unstoppable.
Your success is inevitable when you decide that it is.
And when you work through all the inner doubt, fear and past pain keeping you from knowing that in your soul —
Failure doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not even failure, just neutral feedback.
Something that happens on the way to creating a life beyond your wildest dreams.
This is the state of being my private clients create in Creative Genius, which is currently booked out as my nervous system acclimates to my recent, rapid expansion.
But you can start building that mindset today by joining the Mindset Membership. This is where ambitious creatives do the inner work to monetize their purpose and create lives of freedom, flexibility and financial abundance.
You deserve to experience the joy of living your highest destiny!
I recently gave a member a custom journaling exercise to help her work through self-doubt related to starting a new creative project, and she said: “This has been such a rich and valuable exercise!”
Guided inner work to remove the fear of failure and become unstoppable
Some of these prompts might be a little painful to explore, but it’s okay! Take your time. Your work will be rewarded by miraculous expansion and blessings that rush in to fill the space of everything you release.