How to Handle Fear of Failure

Whether it shows as extreme shyness or performance anxiety.

Everyone knows fear of failure or performance anxiety in one way or another.

Fear of failure is the moment you refuse to do a project because you are too terrified of failing at it. The moment you are not asking that cute girl out because you are too afraid of getting rejected. This time you choose the easy low-profile task instead of the more difficult one.

In short, if you listen and act according to your fear of failure often, it can potentially cost you big opportunities in life that you would have managed easily.

In my years as a clinical psychologist, I saw my fair share of people missing great opportunities because they were simply too scared to face them.

In this blog post, I’ll share the precise steps I worked through with my clients in those situations.

Listen to your anxiety and heighten your emotional awareness

Fear of failure is not always holding you back, sometimes it is also saving your ass.

To determine if you should act according to your inner alarm system, aka the anxiety, you need to let it talk. Ask yourself what is the worst thing that could happen if you would do the obstacle, you are afraid of. Would you be able to handle that worst-case scenario and how?

Once you have determined what exactly the fear is and if you would be able to handle the worst case, you already have a better understanding of how you can take the risk.

Break down the obstacle and get a realistic look

Since we already get a sense of what the anxiety is focused on, we take a closer look at the obstacle.

List out all the skills you would need to succeed. Make sure you focus on your definition of succeeding. Have your worst-case scenario in mind and be honest about the skills necessary to avoid that from happening.

The last step in breaking down the obstacle is rating which skills you already have, and making a mark on those skills.

Perform a Reality-check

By now you got a pretty good overview of the message of the anxiety and the skills needed to succeed. Now it’s time to reality-check them.

Take a look at your anxiety, worst case, and the list of skills needed. Ask yourself for each scenario: what are the chances of that coming true? It is very important to use a number since that makes it more tangible.

Now the possibility your worst case is going to happen has a number.

Deciding on your direction

What we just did is a nice way of handling anxiety in general.

The main job of anxiety is to warn us of danger. No matter if that danger is realistic or not. The number you just created helps you to see if it might be worth the risk.

Now you have a good basis to decide if your fear of failure is keeping you safe from failure or if it is keeping you from growing.

Visualize the long- and short-term consequences

A little help with the decision is to take the long- and short-term consequences into the equation.

The short-term consequences of listening to your anxiety and avoiding the task are always a relief from the emotional pressure you might feel. The anxiety got what it wanted all along, you save in your used environment. On the other hand, the long-term consequence might be that this keeps you from developing and improving.

Growth and learning are always accompanied by fear, you might as well accept that fact right now. The question is how much fear can you tolerate?

Embracing failures, mistakes, and criticism

Adapt the mindset of a lifelong learner, who can always improve through failure, mistakes, and criticism.

Make an active effort to see the lesson behind the failure by writing them out. Journaling can help to make sense of difficult situations, like failing or receiving constructive criticism. Without feedback, it is impossible to identify the skills that you are missing to get better at what you do.

The goal is to reframe those as stepping stones instead of obstacles in your journey.

Take baby-steps

The difference between a goal-oriented and a process-oriented mindset lies in the baby steps.

If you are familiar with thoughts like: “Once I lose the weight, then I can enjoy XYZ.” or “Once I have x amount of money, then I can invite my parents for XYZ.” You might have a more goal-oriented mindset. You tend to see the big picture and the end goal as most important and the process is more of an annoying obstacle to overcome.

Nothing perse wrong with that, but to reduce your performance anxiety it might be helpful to switch to a more process-focused mindset.

With a process-focused mindset, you are more focused on the different small steps you need to take to achieve your goal. For example, focusing more on going to the gym regularly or saving a certain amount every day. This helps you to have a bunch of tiny “in goals” before focusing on the big end goal.

With those baby steps of a process-oriented mindset, you will be able to ease your performance anxiety since you have a higher sense of achievement and, therefore higher motivation to keep at it, hence higher chances of actually succeeding.

Individuals facing fear of failure are often also struggling with self-doubt and lower self-esteem.

Accepting anxiety as part of the process of growing and not something you have to get rid of is a big step in achieving greater things. If you focus on the process more and make baby steps you can achieve a higher sense of achievement which can permanently strengthen your self-esteem. The more you lean into improving your self-awareness and experimenting with different things, the lower the anxiety will get.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” - Susan Jeffers

I know from working with different personalities over the years that sometimes it is not the understanding but more the doing part that is difficult.

If you feel like you need some help working through the different steps, feel free to reach out via my website. I’m happy to guide you through that often-daunting process of handling your performance anxiety.