The new year is the natural start of new beginnings, and while we don’t all make resolutions, we do leap into the new year with a renewed sense of enthusiasm and fervor to make this THE year. Make this OUR YEAR. The year we finally get our shit together, stop procrastinating and making excuses, living in coulda, woulda, shoulda land.

[Tweet “There is still time to make this your BEST YEAR! Embrace your fears and take action!”]

Ahhhhh… has the smell of the New Year faded? Are you back to your old habits of big ideas, slow execution and even slower profitability? Fret not my dear, many an entrepreneur experiences this as spring rears her head each year.

According to U.S. News, approximately 80% of resolutions fail by the second week of February.

This means that most of us are in this sinking ship together. LIFE seems to skew even the best laid intentions. And our quest for success slowly fades as we revert to old habits, doing what we’ve always done, and expecting different results.

Does this mean the average entrepreneur is borderline INSANE?

I’m not gonna lie, I think you have to be a wee bit insane to walk this path anyway, so c’mon crazies, walk with me!

How to Embrace Your Fear of Failure as an Entrepreneur

When you become an entrepreneur, you have a strong desire to succeed. If the desire to succeed was all that was needed, then the world be filled with nothing but success stories.

[Tweet “Desire alone does not breed success. Success requires action, commitment, and a few mistakes along the way. “]

But desire alone won’t keep you from failing. You may have experienced countless failures on your entrepreneurial journey. It may be time to take a step back and look at what you’ve been doing that hasn’t worked for you.

Once you can find what’s not working and what you’re struggling with, you can then find success by making changes. You need to understand what’s gone wrong despite your best efforts.

We need to reverse engineer our process to gain a clear understanding of how we got here, yet again, after the new year, and how we can move forward.

One of our biggest barriers to success is overcoming fear. As much as we try to be fearless, we aren’t and it’s okay.

Often times we don’t recognize our procrastination, or making excuses, and our inability to move forward as fear. But guess what, it’s all fear. All of it. F.E.A.R.

Do Not Let Your Fear of Failure Win

Did you know that it’s not failure that keeps people from trying? The world is full of examples of people who failed multiple times and yet ultimately found success. There’s something worse than failing – and that’s fear of failure because often, fear of failure keeps you from even trying anything at all.

There are some solid reasons behind having a fear of failure. No one disputes that. You might be hesitant to put yourself out there because you’re afraid that people are going to laugh at you or your business idea.

Remember that people laughed at Henry Ford, too. Yet, he became a well-known success story. You might be concerned that you’ll end up failing and be humiliated. There are countless numbers of online success stories.

There are gurus everywhere online who share their failures with their mailing list and talk about it on their website. They do this because failure was part of the journey, it wasn’t the end of the journey.

[Tweet “Failure is part of the journey. It doesn’t have to be the end of your journey.”]

You can overcome a fear of failure by learning to recognize it for what it is. Failure is never the end unless you give up. It’s a stepping stone that many people have walked on to reach the success that they dream of having.

[Tweet “Failure is never the end unless you give up.”]

Sometimes a fear of failure comes because we’re afraid to make mistakes. But making mistakes is how you reach your goals – simply because you’re not perfect. There’s yet to be a single fail-proof human being on the Earth.

Instead of fearing failure, embrace it.

Use it as something that you can learn from. Cut off the negative sound bite in your mind. This is what plays in your head telling you that you’re right to be afraid of failure, that you’re not good enough, that you’re not smart enough, that you’re not talented enough, or not educated enough.

It’s this sound bite that has a loop so that it will play on forever as long as you allow it. Negative thoughts of what you can’t accomplish become reality. Kick the glass-is-empty mindset to the curb and replace it with one that’s optimistic.

If you can’t bring yourself to say that you’ll succeed, then simply say you’re willing to try. That’s all it takes. One step forward. Identify what it is about the fear of failure that’s holding you back.

Is it the scorn of others? The thought of pouring your heart into something and not making it a reality? Fear has been identified as False Evidence Appearing Real. We often have a habit of creating worst case scenarios in our minds that never come to fruition.

Let go of the fear of failure and go after what you want!

Ciao,
Miss Kemya