What does starting a new job and starting a new business have in common? The word “new”. Each “new” phase in life – no matter what stage you are at currently – can bring about the dreaded “Fear of Failure” or “Fear of Risk” or “Fear of Losing Stability.” Any new venture will do this to varying degrees, but also remember that negative emotions are brought about by what we tell ourselves.
Do you say to yourself… “it’s too late to start over.” Or “I don’t have enough experience yet to make a change in my career.” Or my personal favorite… “I am afraid of losing my financial stability, so I am just going to stay put.”
Overcoming Fear of Failure
An effective way of losing this fear of failure is to replace the word with something less permanent yet just as concise to the point. For example, “It’s too late” can be replaced with “It’s never too late to learn something new”. This is what 83-year old Shirley Curry must have told herself when she built her YouTube channel to over 1 million viewers by streaming her video gaming activities. No one succeeds without having come up short sometime in the past. Mistakes are there to learn from, not cry over – and certainly not cut yourself of from due to age.
This state of mind is not only less harsh but also more business-oriented with a focus on the positive. Whether you reach your original goal or not, you grow one step better. A new chapter in your business life is being started or you learn a lesson that you can apply next time you attempt a business-related change. Either way, fear is never in the room because you keep the door shut. You never give it a chance to be an option.
The same is true of the thought process of “I don’t have enough experience yet.” For example, both Julia Hartz who created ticket processing company Eventbrite and Sara Blakely the inventor and CEO of Spanx build their billion-dollar businesses before the age of 30, all by not giving into negative thinking. They never gave into a fear of “not enough experience” a chance to exist; therefore, it doesn’t. It is a form of kindness for your psyche and a method to keep your business acumen sharp. Once you start pushing negative connotations and emotions out of your head while you are “on the clock”, you will find out just how beneficial it is for success. Always replace a negative word with a positive term without losing sight of the importance of the action or goal.
We all know that we attract what we are and what we deserve. This law of nature also applies to the board room or the storefront you just opened for business. Your state of mind dictates your actions and thoughts, and that bleeds into your reactions concerning three key areas of the consumer base that directly affects a business:
- Reading past and current business trends
- The needs of potential customers
- Whether consumers are playing fast and loose with their expendable incomes
All of the factors above play into whether a new business succeeds or not, so it becomes very hard to stay on track when you let your emotions cloud your mind. Obviously, this is not to say you should be robotic about things. When you keep a positive, practical, and learn-from your-mistakes mindset about the change you are putting into your business life, positive things will surely happen.