How to overcome your fear of failure

One of the cornerstones of the work that I do with my clients is to first deconstruct the belief system they’ve build around themselves and their dreams. Very often this is one of the main blocks stopping them from going after what they want.

Within that belief system the fear of failure takes a central role. The culture we live in is a culture of winners, where failure is seen as something bad that needs to be avoided. As women this translates into us easily being seen as helpless when we fail, with society ready to come to our rescue by letting us know it’s OK not to pursue our dreams. When we try and fail we’re not motivated to try again, but rather dusted off and put back into the good girl box, confronted with the cultural bias that it isn’t for us in the first place, that we’re not supposed to be winners anyway.

Because of this many women fear failure. It’s hard enough to step out of comfort zones, and go against what society wants us to believe about ourselves. When we fail – or think about failing – our biggest fear comes up: that we’re simply not good enough.  The truth is there’s no growth, no change, no progress without some failure too.

Failure is an essential learning experience to get to where you want to go. If you already knew exactly how to get there you wouldn’t fail – true – but you’d already be there!

How to overcome your fear of failure?

Here are 3 tips that have helped me and many of my clients to overcome their fear of failure. I hope they’ll be helpful for you too.

• Change your belief system about failure

Failing is not something bad that needs to be avoided at all costs. In fact, it’s one of the fastest ways to learn. In order to overcome your fear of failure it’s important to change your belief system about what it really is.

Failure doesn’t define you. It has nothing to do with who you are. Failure doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough, or smart enough. It only teaches you something. Probably a valuable lesson. By changing your belief system about failure you’re giving yourself space to experiment, play, and learn. Essential practices to dream bigger, and achieve your goals.

• Remember that everyone fails

There’s no such thing as overnight success. Everyone who ever achieved anything failed miserably – probably a gazillion times – before succeeding. History is full of stories of big dreamers who went on yearlong journeys of failure before becoming the successes they’re known to be today. Just think of Oprah, J.K. Rowling, Lady Gaga.

That’s why I love reading biographies. By learning about the struggles that others came across their journeys to success, I’m empowered to dream bigger and believe I can do it to. Here’s a couple that I particularly like:

Oprah Winfrey: A Biography
Michelle Obama: A Life
Gloria Steinem: My Life on the Road
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban
Angela Davis: An Autobiography

• What’s the worst that could happen?

When everything else fails (pun intended) I love to ask myself this question. This powerful question is a miracle worker. Both for myself, and my clients. When the fear of failure becomes so strong that it causes procrastination or indecision it’s my go-to mantra. By asking myself what’s the worst that could happen I almost always realize the worst possible outcome is far better than not taking a chance at all.

I invite you to try it out for yourself. Think about what it is you want to do. Now think about what would happen – and I mean really happen – if you failed. Chances are your ego might be bruised a bit, and you might have to go back to the drawing tables and rework your plan. But… will the world end? Will everything in your life fall apart? Will you grow a second pair of legs? Probably not.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to take risks (without losing everything you have)

In today’s dream bigger tip I want to focus on the “bigger” part of the process. In everything we aim to achieve there’s a level of change involved. Learning a new language, starting a business, developing healthier habits, … whatever you decide to undertake change is what will take you from where you are right now to where you want to be.

If you’ve been dreaming small until now – that is if you haven’t acted on your big dreams because you believe those dreams are not for you or you don’t know where to start – dreaming bigger means changing the way you’ve conceived your dreams so far. This change – like any other – requires you to learn to be comfortable with what often feels like excruciating uncertainty. It means learning to take risks, and be OK with doing it.

Imagine your big dream is to start your own shop on Etsy. You create the most beautiful jewelry, that all your friends love. But your own business? Actually making money from your craft? That’s not for you. At least, that’s what you keep convincing yourself of. So you keep dreaming small.

In order to dream bigger you need to be willing to take risks. Try something new. Tell yourself, whatever the voice in your head is saying, that you can do it.

How to learn to take risks?

In what follows I share 3 things that have helped me to learn to take risks, and reprogram myself to dream bigger. Whatever your big dreams are, if you’ve been hesitant to pursue them because it feels “too risky”, these tips might help you get started.

• Dream big, but start small

What I hear most often when I’m working with clients, is that they don’t know where to start. The lack of clarity about what to do first sometimes comes from not knowing what they really want, but in many cases it’s the result of feeling overwhelmed by the daunting task to start working on achieving dreams that look like huge mountains.

I know it can be so overwhelming to look at your big dreams in their entirety, and ask yourself how you’ll ever be able to reach them. Like standing in flip flops, t-shirt and pink shorts at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, wondering how you’ll ever reach the top. The result of this type of overwhelm is often inaction. The risks to undertake the adventure are simply too great to even try – or so it seems.

That’s why it’s important to dream big, but start small. Instead of focusing on the mountain, focus on the first step you can take right now. Then take that step. It will help reduce the level of risk you think you’re taking, while actually moving you towards your goals.

• Remember that you can always change your mind

Another reason my clients often procrastinate on getting started with their big dreams is the fear that the choices they’ll make will be forever. This is a mistake our mind makes when we’re about to step into uncertainty. Leaving the familiar behind is one of the hardest things we can do. We’re programmed to like the comfort that comes from knowing what to expect, so jumping into the unknown often feels like one of the most important decisions we can make in our life.

Although deciding to change something in your life can feel like a decision you’ll have to live with forever, this simply isn’t true. It’s not because you start an Etsy shop today, that you have to commit to it forever.

Even if you make a decision that you end up regretting later on, there’s almost always a way back. Or at least another direction you can take that will get you closer to what you really want. That’s the beauty of being in charge of your life, and having the power to make decisions. And why risk taking is not so risky after all.

• Always fail forward

Change involves risk, but it also involves learning. Perhaps there’s even no real learning without at least a little risk taking. Inside our comfort zone we’re usually well aware of what we know, and what we don’t know. Learning requires us to step outside of it, and stretch ourselves a little more. It’s outside of our comfort zone, where risks are taken, that we open ourselves up for failure.

The fear of failure is one of the top reasons why so many women don’t follow their dreams. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained above, there’s no risk taking without risk of failing. And that’s actually OK. What needs to happen to dream bigger is not to avoid failure at all costs, but to reframe what failure really is, and to get rid of the notion that it’s bad to fail.

Failure is essential to growth, and part of the process. Learn to get comfortable with your mistakes, to see them as key learning moments, to fail forward.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to make space for your dreams

We all live busy lives. They’re packed full with to-dos, responsibilities, jobs, businesses, things we need to take care of on a daily basis. It’s easy to get stuck in a routine that keeps little room for change. And when dreaming big is concerned, change is what we’re after.

In my coaching practice, but also in my life in general I come across a lot of clutter that keeps so many big dreamers from achieving their dreams. The thing is, if you’re going after your big dreams you need to make room for them to come alive. And that’s where I see a lot of people get stuck.

If you dream about more free time to spend doing what you love, but you keep binging on Netflix every chance you get, you’re not making space for your dream. If your big dream is to become a writer, but your desk is so cluttered that even a post-it note won’t fit on it, you’re not giving your dream a chance. That’s why making room for your dreams to come alive is so important.

How do you make room for your dreams?

• Make space

Space is a broad concept. Sometimes for our dreams to come alive we need to make physical space for them, like in the example of the cluttered desk above. Sometimes the space we need to make is less literal, like a change in the way we spend our time, or a mental uncluttering so we can have more room to think, be creative, see things from a new perspective that will help us achieve our big dreams. If you’re not making progress on your dreams, clutter might be the culprit. So look around you, and inside of you for what might take up space and keep your dreams from blooming.

• Let go of what doesn’t serve you

Imagine you’re a bookkeeper who’s big dream is to become a chef. You’re used to finding answers to most of your questions in books, or online. So you set out to learn how to cook the same way – after all that’s how you do everything! Quickly you realize it isn’t working. It’s lonely in the kitchen with just books. Sometimes you’re lost, not sure you’re doing it right or what the result should be.

We’ve all learned to do a million things in a million particular ways. As humans that need to operate in society, keep ourselves alive, make a living, raise families this is an incredible bag of tricks to have. It usually serves us well, and makes our lives easier. The issue with all these acquired ways of thinking, seeing, and doing things is that often achieving big dreams requires a new set of skills, another approach, a different perspective.

That’s why it’s important to check in with yourself regularly, and let go of what doesn’t serve you anymore. Our bookkeeper above clearly isn’t getting anywhere by applying a strategy that worked well for other areas of her life. By checking in with herself she realizes she needs to let go of her books, and find someone to actually show her how it’s done so she signs up for a cooking class. From there she enrolls in a cooking school, earns a degree, starts her own restaurant, and achieves her big dream.

• Focus on how you want to feel

Often the room our dreams need to come alive relates to the way those dreams will eventually take shape. When we have a goal or dream in mind we have a mental picture of what our life will look like once that dream comes true. That mental picture can take up so much space, that there’s little room left for the dream to take on a shape of its own.

Someone dreaming of love, passion, and romance might be stuck on the mental picture that achieving her dream can only be within the unhappy relationship she’s in. By detaching from the outcome – infuse passion in a relationship that no longer works – and focusing on how she wants to feel instead – loved, and wanted – she’s able to let go of the mental picture that it can only happen with her current partner, and create room for a new relationship that can make her dream come true.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to believe your dreams are possible

Have you ever dreamt about something really, really big only to find yourself a few minutes later deciding that you’d never be able to achieve it? If you did, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve been through this with my own dreams, and I’ve helped so many women that experienced the same thing with theirs.

One of the main reasons why we don’t achieve our big dreams, is that we don’t really believe we can achieve them. Of course, the dynamics at play are a bit more complicated than that, but the bottom line remains the same: we don’t pursue what we don’t believe in.

So in order to achieve our dreams, first we need to truly believe they are possible. Here are three tips that I’ve used to believe in my own dreams, and that many clients, and friends have successfully applied to believe in theirs.

How to believe in your dreams?

• Don’t censor yourself

When you dream big it’s important not to censor yourself. Don’t think about how you’re going to achieve something when you’re dreaming about it, but instead focus on what it is that you want. Planning can come later, for if you start questioning the plan at this stage, you’ll never get past your own doubts.

• Visualize yourself achieving your dreams

The bigger the dream, the harder it is to imagine yourself achieving it. One way to help you believe in your dreams is to short wire your brain into believing you’ve already achieved them. To do this you must visualise yourself already there, and keep the picture of your dreams in your mind as much as possible. I love creating vision boards on Pinterest to help me do this. Every morning I’ll do a quick browse through my boards. It helps me remember what I’m going for, and believing that I can achieve it!

• Keep track of small wins

The road to big dreams can be long. Even if you start out believing in your dreams, the longer a dream takes to achieve the bigger the chance you might lose faith along the way. That’s why it’s important to keep track of your small wins. I keep a list close by with all the tiny milestones I’ve achieved for each of my dreams. When I feel doubt creep in I take out my list and I review it. It reminds me of where I started, and how far I’ve come. This helps me to stay motivated, and to keep believing I will eventually get there.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to figure out what you want (what you really, really want)

Dreaming Bigger starts with figuring out what you really want. How else will you achieve it? Of course, this is much easier said than done. I know, believe me, I’ve been there. With a million ideas swirling in my head, stopped in my tracks not knowing how to start, or what to get started with first.

That’s precisely why it’s so important to know what you really want. For indecision is a dream killer. It will keep the most ambitious, creative change makers on the side lines procrastinating instead of taking powerful action. It will make us believe that we can’t do it, that it’s not meant for us, or that we don’t really want it after all (the worst one of all!).

So to dream bigger you need to gain clarity about what you want. There are many ways to do this, some easy others not so much. Below you’ll find 3 exercises that I have my coaching clients do, and that have proven to be successful time and time again.

How to figure out what you really want?

• Write Down Your Ideal Day

Whether you’re looking to achieve big goals in your career, business or personal life write down what your ideal day for each one that is relevant to you. If you want to figure out what career path to follow for instance, think about how you want to feel when going to work, what your environment might look like, what would bring you joy. Don’t be afraid to be specific. The more detailed your ideal day, the more clarity you’ll get about what it is you really want.

• Write Down a List of Things You Don’t Want

I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s often easier to identify what we don’t want instead of what we do want. The format doesn’t matter. It can be a bullet list of things, a journal entry, even a Pinterest board of things that you want less of in your life, career, or business. Once you’ve identified what you don’t want, come up with the opposites, the things you want more of. If you wrote down that you want less time commuting back and to work for example, ask yourself how you’d love to spend that extra time. This will guide you to the things that really matter to you.

• Connect With Your Feelings

The third, and perhaps most powerful tip, is to connect with your feelings. I believe that deep down we know what we want, even if we’re unaware of it. By connecting with your feelings throughout your day at work or at home you’ll get a sense of the things that light you up, and those that don’t. The more you do this, and the clearer you become about what brings you joy, and happiness, the closer you’ll be to figuring out what you really want.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.