Many people are too afraid to succeed. They are driven by the fear of failure.
The fear of the unknown is a frequent companion to this fear of failure. With this pair, it’s easy to get stuck like a wooly mammoth in a tar pit.
Only with humans, it leads to emotional death rather than a physical one.
BIGG success is about entrepreneuring your life – taking control to create the life of your dreams. Your life is your enterprise and you are the owner.
Do entrepreneurs experience this dismal duo – the fear of failure and the fear of the unknown?
Certainly.
As the entrepreneur of your life, how can you conquer these frightful fears? Let’s take them one at a time.
The fear of failure
You probably won’t really think about it this way. But you’ll feel it when it happens.
It will eat at you. You’ll have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It will spur you to overcome inertia and take action.
Once you sense it, you will use the replacement technique. You will replace one fear with another.
Wait just a minute…isn’t fear something you need to stare down? Can fear be positive? Can fear drive you forward?
Absolutely.
You will replace your fear of failure with the fear of not trying.
More specifically, you’ll know you’re ready to do something BIGG when your fear of not trying overwhelms your fear of failure.
It’s really a conscious choice. You get to choose your regret.
The regret menu only has two items on it. You can regret what you did or you can regret what you didn’t do. Order one and it will be yours.
Most people don’t think about the second one. They are driven by the first. If they try something and fail, they’ll feel regret.
But both research and anecdotal evidence from people close to death show that regrets about what you didn’t do are tougher to overcome.
John Greenleaf Whittier said it best:
“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.”
You’re not most people. You’re a winner. You will be driven by what might be.
You can live with failure. You cannot accept not trying.
But it’s more than just that…
The fear of the unknown
We live in incredibly uncertain and volatile times. It terrifies the average person.
But you’re no ordinary human being. You’re extraordinary.
You accept the fact that you can’t predict the future. You have to create it yourself.
This isn’t a naïve point-of-view. In fact, it’s quite sophisticated. Because with this realization, like all successful entrepreneurs, you focus on the downside.
More specifically, you work to limit the risk of trying something. You begin actively engaging your mind with how to make it work.
Note that, while you’re doing this, most people are still listing off all the reasons that it won’t work. They continue to convince themselves that they would be a failure. And they will be.
But you’re busy mitigating the risk. Once you get the downside to an acceptable level, you give your idea a try.
You start small. You test it. You’re still in the research & development stage.
You’re learning while most people are worrying. Learn. Grow. Prosper. It leads to BIGG success.
How did you conquer your fears?
Image in this post from stock.xchng
We’ve all seen it. A prodigy comes along. We’re in awe of his or her talent. It just seems so natural. Yet before long, their flame burns out.
We talked with one of my former students recently. He and some friends have a great idea for a business.
These guys really impressed me. They had done their research. They asked us a lot of questions. Then they went back and did even more research. They’ve proven out the opportunity. Obviously, there are no guarantees but they seem to have an idea that could make money. They have it all, but yet they have nothing!
