Fear of Failure

Lot of us experience Fear of Failure, but do not identify it as fear of failure. Unless you recognize the problem, you cannot fix it. Due to ego issues, one will go into denial mode and ignore the problem. There is no super human unless you are YOGI or a MONK who do not have earthly desires. Plato (Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world) rightly pointed out that, human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. The desire creates the need of pursuing something and the process of pursuing has two outcomes, one could be failure and the other could be success. The journey of pursuing the desired outcome is a process and during the process one experiences the feeling of anxiety and unknown feeling of fear of failure.

This is quite common in our every day’s life and particularly people who are ambitious and humans chasing goals. The first enemy to this breed of people is fear of failure, it is also known as atychiphobia. The three physiognomies of this term include the abnormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear of failure. If you summarize, it is unnecessary, it is consistent and negativity.

There are hundreds of theories explaining how to overcome this particular phenomenon. I found a very simple sutra to handle this psychological myth.

1. The first step is recognizing that you are afraid of something, it could be failure also. We fail to recognize that failure is the stepping stone of success. Recognize the issue.

2. The second step is acceptance. Surrender to the feeling of fear, it is a great guru, teaches many things. The life like a coin has two sides, one is success and the second one is failure in any issue you handle in the life. It could be war, business, love, marriage, relationship, studies, job hunt and many more. Once you accept that failure is part and parcel of the game, you are a winner. When it is inevitable, better enjoy the situation instead of whinging. It is quite possible that the process could teach you something that could help you next time. Acceptance is paramount.

3. The third step is tackling it. If you are in a situation you are afraid of failure, allow the feeling to sink into you. Unless, you are drowning, you will not make an effort to swim. Your survival instincts guide you how to come out of it. You have the power to overcome any issue, due to mindset fixation; we struggle to tackle the problem. Tackling is critical.

Success is born out of failure, loyalty towards your goal and undeterred perseverance. Let me sign off with the golden words of Winston Churchill “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”.