Fear of failure is one of my biggest worries. The thing is I think it has got worse as I have got older. This may be down to some of the crappy experiences that I have had over the last few years.
You see up until I was about 30 years old I was only used to success. I had risen to a high level within my industry of financial services, was joint owner of a company that employed 33 staff and turned over £120,000 every month. I had nice holidays, drove a beautiful Audi A6 and had a nice 4 bedroom detached house.
Then when we lost everything following the 2008 credit crisis, it really knocked my confidence. I had interview after interview with various banks and brokerages and no one would employ me.
This was my first taste of ‘failure’ (I’ve since learnt to look at this situation differently but at the time it represented failure).
I owed large amounts of money, was living with my in laws, had no car, and no job. With a young son to feed and a daughter along the way, it was one of the toughest situations I have ever had to deal with. I genuinely thought I had let my family down.
This experience effected me.
It effected the decisions that I made and continue to make to this day.
I never want to go back to that dark place.
The biggest problem with the ‘fear of failure’ as I see it is that it leads to anxiety, worry and procrastination. I regularly get knots in my stomach. Sometimes I still lay awake at night worrying about things going wrong – members leaving, what if facebook change their advertising rules, what if our clients stop seeing results etc.
Big Life Lesson Number 1:
In order to feel fulfilled as an individual, you need to keep growing. You need to keep learning and you need to keep setting goals and moving towards them.
When you are hindered by the fear of failure, anxiety, worry and procrastination get in the way of this, and if you let them overpower you then you will not move forward and you will not feel fulfilled. You stop setting goals and at best you stand still, but in most cases you actually move backwards in real terms as your competition move ahead of you.
Having spoken to lots of different trainers on this subject, I know that many other Personal Trainers feel the same way. They have invested in various courses, mentors, seminars, membership sites, software programmes and things haven’t worked out. They have lost money. This might have happened a few times and so there is a negative association attached to all of the above.
We don’t want to keep losing money . keep failing, keep struggling month after month and so end up doing nothing. Procrastination sets in.
There is a massive life lesson that I have learnt over the last 18 months. It is one that has allowed me to grow my training business to nearly 200 members, produce and sell a kettlebell home workout programme to women all over the World and then start the PT100K Club helping other Personal Trainers to instantly grow their businesses. All of this has been done while I continually tackle my fear of failure on a daily basis.
Big Life Lesson Number 2
My whole world changed when I listened to a Tony Robbins interview with Oprah Winfrey. He was talking about procrastination and fear of failure, and referred to a time that he was sitting down having a chat with Bruce Springstein (as you do!).
Bruce said to him that whenever he is backstage before a show, getting ready to go out, his stomach is in knots, he feels sick, his legs are like jelly, he is full of anxiety and adrenalin………and that is when he knows he is ready to go out and perform. He interprets those signals from his body as a sign that he is now ready to go and give the show of his life.
We’re talking about a guy that has sold millions of records worldwide with millions of loyal fans and with nothing left to prove. He still gets those feelings of worry, anxiety and fear and he uses that as a signal to then move forward. He doesn’t interpret it as a signal to stand still or go backwards.
If someone like Bruce Springstein can openly admit to feeling like this, then I guess it’s fine for us to feel like it as well.
I’ve learnt to accept that having the fear is OK. In fact it’s a sign that I am about to do something that is positive and I am moving forward towards my goals. As long as you take immediate action and don’t let the fear paralyse you, it’s actually a really good thing.
Big Life Lesson Number 3
The other thing that I have learnt to accept is that ‘failure’ does not exist anyway. Just lessons and experiences. If something doesn’t go according to plan, you can treat it as an experience to learn from or you can call yourself a failure. Either way the situation is what it is and if you choose to interpret it as a lesson then this will allow you to move forward much quicker and with more confidence.
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