Overcoming My Fear of Failure

I have always been a highly ambitious person. And for a long time, I pushed myself to meet goal after goal without acknowledging any success while just saying “onto the next goal, this is what ambitious people do”. After going through two serious phases of burn out, I finally questioned why I was so ambitious. And it was because I was terrified of failure. I’m scared of failure, I’m scared of not being in control of the outcome, and consequently I work myself into the ground.

So, in the past few months I’ve been really diving into why I react this way. By doing this I’ve realized that I tend to only take opportunities that allow me to exercise my strengths. This means that any opportunities where I would be challenged or learn something new, I actively avoided and went so far as rejecting simply because I was terrified I wouldn’t be capable of succeeding.

When I realized this was why I was rejecting opportunities, I was actually really upset at first. I was confused on how I could improve my self confidence and upset I had let myself down in this way. I had to face the fact that I was accepting failure before even attempting to do things. While this was a horrible feeling, it actually helped me realize that failing isn’t the worst thing in the world. I’d been failing for years because of my fear of failure, and I was fine. The world hasn’t ended. I may be delayed in my success, but everything happens for a reason.

I’m sharing this in case you’re in a similar situation. I want to leave you with two pieces of advice I live by:

1. Rejection is redirection (and so is “failure”)

2. Do the scary thing or you’re going to wonder what could’ve been for the rest of your life

Have a great Monday besties 🫶

#Lemon8Diary #lemon8diarychallenge #failureleadstosuccess #unaesthetic #embracevulnerability #selfgrowth #selflove #selfconfidence #success #successmindset