Overcoming Fear of Failure

“Every successful person has to overcome the fear of failure.”

– Debashish Mridha

Everyone has fear of something or the other. It could be fear of height, fear of fire, fear of darkness, fear of closed places and many more. One such fear is fear of failure. It sometimes stop people from taking risks which may lead to great opportunities along their way. Generally, one experiences fear of failure when setting out on any new undertaking.

Causes of Fear of Failure

Definition of fear of failure differ from person to person depending on a person’s varying benchmarks, values, ethics and beliefs etc. For some fear of failure could be a learning experience, but for some it could be very depressing, It depends how the person deal with his or fear.

Fear of Failure is known as Atychiphobia. It stops one to do things  that can move them forward to achieve his or her goal. Fear of failure can be caused by many reasons. It could be having unsupportive parents in childhood, that is because may be they faced humiliation or were discouraged in childhood, they carry those negative feelings to adulthood. Or, the person might have gone thorough some traumatic incidents at some point in his or her life.

Some ways to overcome Fear of Failure

1. Taking fear as a learning experience: Learning is a gradual process and failure is a part of learning. Learning requires creativity, exploration and experience. Taking up failure positively as a strength not as a weakness pushes you to work harder.
2. Facing your failure: One of the way to overcome your failure is exposure therapy. This technique involves facing your failure and it can lessen the effect of failure.
3. Stay positive: Taking lessons from your past experiences and working towards your goal keeping a positive attitude is what you can do to overcome your fear. Focusing only on negative aspects, worsens the situation. So be positive.
4. Keep developing: Introspect areas you are good at and focus on developing it. This will boost your self-confidence. Practicing and demonstrative yourself will make you better and be focused.
5. Take deep breaths: When you panic take control of your breathing and inhale deeply and slowly and then exhale at same pace, to help bring a normal rhythm to your breath. This will calm you down.

– Aayushi Prasad
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