8 Mantras to Conquer Your Fear of Failure Confidently And Shine: Entrepreneurship

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Cowards never begin... Winners never wait for chances... Quitters never win.

No one knows this better than me who has continually reinvested time, endurance and diligence to survive the tough roads of entrepreneurship juxtaposed with a host of rewarding challenges and harsh failures. But, I never gave up because I robustly have faith in this insightful statement:

“Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”

Failure is an elixir to succeed. Every entrepreneur who is possessed by a ‘FEAR of FAILURE’ must confront the uncountable slips, trips and falls on the ice before he can achieve the greatness in the field of Entrepreneurship. One must accept the success as a beautiful face of failure and ignite the ‘willingness to be victorious’ with true wisdom and patience. All the defeats and bad experiences must be treated as a stepping stone towards the path to great triumph.

Ask any magnate about his helm of hardship to establish a business and you will hear a unique story of an entrepreneurial seizure that every ambitious founder has experienced at some point. Even the most successful people like Arianna Huffington, Akio Morita, Bill Gates, Evan Williams, Henry Ford and Fred Smith took the big risks, survived the specular flameouts and won the major failure that smacked them in the face.

Does it mean you’ve to fail greatly to achieve success and greatness?

To be immensely successful in the world of business, you should believe in the power of FAILURE every single time you’re stuck and growth is eluding you. Consider failure as a stepping stone to accumulate big victories and trophies rather than trying not to fail.

Interestingly, a survey conducted by a division of American Management Association International 'AMA Enterprise' suggested that 'Fear of failure' and 'Anxiety' are the real culprits weeding out negative disengagement energy and constantly hampering an employee's intrinsic motivation. Some important highlights of the survey findings are:

• 38% afraid of being held responsible for mistakes or failures

• 18% already ingrained in problems associated with the organization’s culture

• 14% upset with incentives or deterrents in organizational processes

• 14% battling against indifferences

• 9% are reluctant to make decisions

• 7% don’t know

Be ready with your own strategies to handle the setbacks better and ride on towards a more optimistic course for the future. Give a successful response to your fear of failure with these eight mantras to ‘thrive’ and not ‘survive’ your Entrepreneurial Journey and survive the roller coaster ride.

1. Have a point of view:

Every great entrepreneur has an own point of view and so you do. You must know your missions and keep your vision very clear. Also, as an entrepreneur, you should always be capable enough to justify the sweat and efforts that go into something. This is a sure-fire way to differentiate yourself and get an appreciation for what you do.

2. Set your priorities clear:

Eight out of ten entrepreneurs do this blunder mistake of mismanaging their priorities. They take a look at to-do list only at the beginning or end of the day, which is absolutely wrong. To be successful, you need to think strategically on a macro level concretely about setting priorities and timely communicate the priorities to your personnel. This way, you will be able to manage the daily “heat of battle” decision-making the process very efficiently and end up saving some quality time to focus on big opportunities and problems beyond the daily business tasks.

3. Find a balance between Urgency & Innovation:

In today's age of competition, most business entrepreneurs have no luxury of time and so it is very important for them to find a right balance between the urgency of immediate tasks and emphasizing long-term innovation. For an entrepreneur, it really makes a huge sense to cleverly instill a sense of urgency while maintaining an organizational culture fostering innovation amongst the workforce.

Let's understand this with an example: Suppose you've to manage a team of experts who are majorly focused on beating the clock; in this case true innovation is definitely a tough challenge to achieve. On the other hand, if you've no set deadlines for the projects, there is a possibility of unfinished projects. A smart way to maintain harmony, urgency, and innovation is quite simple: you should avoid treating every single project like an urgent one. Obviously, not all projects, at a single moment of time, are created equal. Ranking the tasks on the basis of importance will provide your team a clearer sense of the organization’s immediate goals.

4. Ignore overnight success stories:

There is no such thing as overnight success and so, no need to feel bad because you have not achieved a meteoric rise to success overnight. Trust me, overnight success is one of the worst things that can happen to you! Even those entrepreneurs who have managed to make it big have spent their many years of life preparing themselves up for just that one single moment that changed everything for them.

5. Gratify your customers and employees:

If customers are the fuel for any business then happy employees are the engine. The key to business success is winning and keeping the workforce and customers. And the key to winning and keeping them is happy relationships. Unfortunately, most of the business owners forget this simple rule of thumb and get busy building their personal brand. I suggest all the entrepreneurs to make it a daily habit of sitting down calmly and being thankful for all the support they've been given by their employees and all the appreciation they've received from their customers so far. This simple 2-minute task will keep you focused and productive.

6. Better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole:

You must be clear with your vision and must listen to your mission. Work for the long haul by strongly focusing on doing one thing right instead of becoming a jack of all trades. It is always beneficial to be a master of some and do it perfectly.

7. Stay Grounded:

One must always remember that a journey of entrepreneur will be very similar to riding a roller coaster; it will be full of ups and downs. To conquer, you must stick to the concept of positive thinking and stay calm. Whenever you are hit by a setback, just stay positive and realise that it is not the final destination. The setback is just a stepping-stone towards a great story of success.

“Winners never quit and Quitters never win” – one must always follow this great rule of thumb. Failure in life can’t be escaped. It is not uncommon to fall on hard times and battle against the setbacks. What matters the most is how bravely you accepted the failure, validated the mistakes you’ve made when exposed to disappointment and moved on.

Even an award-winning author J.K. Rowling said that it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all–in which case, you fail by default. GodSpeed!