2.16.2005

Afraid of failure?

I found a good article called "Overcoming the Fear of Failure," which says, "The Law of Feedback states: there is no failure; there is only feedback. Successful people look at mistakes as outcomes or results, not as failure. Unsuccessful people look at mistakes as permanent and personal."

It lists the following steps you can take to overcome your fear (if you happen to be in that situation right now):

Step One: Take action.

Step Two: Persist.

Step Three: Don’t take failure personally.

Step Four: Do things differently.

Step Five: Don’t be so hard on yourself.

Step Six: Treat the experience as an opportunity to learn. Ask yourself these questions:

(1) What was the mistake?
(2) Why did it happen?
(3) How could it have been prevented?
(4) How can I do better next time?

Then use what you learned from the experience to do things differently so you get different results next time. Learn from the experience or ignore it.

Step Seven: Look for possible opportunities that result from the experience.

Step Eight: Fail forward fast.

The article goes into more detail and there are also motivational quotes at the site.

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