Hector_Lamarque_-_Conquer_your_fear

People often let fear hold them back from achieving their goals. Fear of failure, rejection, judgment, and vulnerability can all prevent people from taking action. However, successful individuals embrace fear as a growth tool and push through their discomfort. Fear of failure is learned and can be unlearned. By facing their fears, individuals can take back control of their lives and achieve business success. It's important to remember that everything you want is on the other side of fear. This is one of the things that I've seen over the years that's prevented people from accomplishing what they want to accomplish. You know, I've recruited literally tens of thousands of people in my business over the last 30 years. Several hundred thousand probably. And probably the number one thing that I see people, you know, why they quit, why they continue is, you know, they're afraid of fear of failure or whatever, but they're afraid. Most people are just afraid. They're afraid of being rejected. They're afraid of, you know, what people think about them. They're afraid of so many different things. So what they inevitably do is adjust their behavior, you know, around their fear and then they don't really ever do anything. It's really kind of sad. And I think that's how most people go through life. And I want to, hopefully this article will help, you know, reduce that, eliminate that. That would be great. Okay. Six surprisingly simple strategies to turn fear of failure into business success. So has it ever happened to you, you're about to do something important and suddenly you're stuck with this sickening, pounding feeling just above your stomach, you know, like right before you're going to talk to somebody about your business or you're going to prospect or, you know, you're about to maybe ask for the check or whatever it is, right? You know, there may, there's somebody you really want to, you think would be great in your business or whatever client that you, that you really think would be fantastic. And you just got, you know, you're scared of death, right? What are you scared of? Right? What are you afraid of? You're afraid of being rejected. You're afraid of failing. You're afraid of them not liking what you're doing and judging you and all kinds of things. You know, it's nauseating. You can't breathe. You just can't get enough air. Pressure sits on your shoulders and you just don't know where it's coming from or do you? It's paralyzing for your peers every time you plan on doing something outside of your comfort zone or if you're not sure what will happen no matter how banal the task may be. So what happens, you know, everybody's, when we're doing something outside of our comfort zone, it just, well, it's really uncomfortable. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel right while it's happening. But the great news is everything great that's going to happen to you, for the most part, it's going to come outside of your comfort zone and you've got to realize that and you've got to learn how to accept and almost kind of like fear, like that feeling, but then you go forward anyway. You do it anyways. And that's what all winners do. They feel that same fear. They feel that same apprehension. They don't want to be rejected. They don't want to be judged. But you know what? They don't want to be judged. But you know what? They want to be successful more than they want to be comfortable and so they just do it anyways. So I'm going to keep saying that a lot, do it anyways. So, but mostly you're afraid you're wrong about yourself. Maybe the entrepreneurial aspiration of yours is the fruit of an illusion that you can succeed, right? Maybe your ideas are ridiculous. Everyone's waiting for you to crash. Maybe you're just a fool in this fantasy of being an entrepreneur. It's just not a fantasy, right? Well, there's only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve and that's the fear of failure. That's by Paulo Coelho. That's a really good quote there. You are afraid to fail. This fear suffocates you. It has control over your life and threatens your business success. What if I revealed a few ways to take back control of your life? What if I told you that proven strategies could turn your fear of failure straight into business success? Isn't that exactly what you need? But before we look at these strategies, let's see where your fear of failure comes from. Of course, you have a fear of failure. You went to school, right? You usually fear failure when you're about to do something for the first time. Anytime you're doing something that's out of your comfort zone for the first time, you're going to have that little bit of fear, right? Anxiety. So, we get different results. Each time we try, like when you call someone, we normally don't fear failing a task. We're really, we're well accustomed to. So, please be aware. You're not born with low confidence or fear of failure. Your fear of failure is an acquired emotion, acquired in your early youth and especially your school years. What is the only thing that you learned in school? Giving the right answer the first time. Giving the wrong answer is certain to lead to punishment, humiliation from peers, teacher disapproval, discipline, possibly lower grades, consequently the end of your schooling years. You're effectively trained to be afraid to fail. Maybe even your parents did some of that stuff, right? They made you afraid to fail. And acquiring your fear of failure is actually a good thing. It does not belong to you like your eye color. This means you can lose it again. With the fear of failure, you get more than you bargained for. Humans have many fears to cope with. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a list of 15 to 20 types of fear. The fear of failure is a nasty thing because it actually combines a variety of different fears. The most common fears found within fear of failure are the following. Number one, the fear of embarrassment. This is the fear of failing in front of others, right? And being ridiculed. Nobody wants to be embarrassed. People stop trying or they don't attempt often because their fear of embarrassment. Why aren't you making that call? Why aren't you calling those friends of yours? Why aren't you calling your old school mates? Why aren't you calling whoever, right? You're being embarrassed. Number two, fear of being judged, which is very similar. This fear is based on your need for approval, which we developed in our childhood. So we want to be approved of, right? So we don't want to be judged. That's why a lot of times people are afraid to get into the sales business, for example, because you don't want to be judged, right? Nobody wants to be judged. And that stops us from becoming who we could become, right? That's fear of being judged. Number three, the fear of rejection. This fear is based on personalizing what others do or say about us. Like when somebody says no, they're not saying no to you. They're saying no to the opportunity. They're saying no to your product or service. They're not saying no to you as a human being, like you're a rotten scumbag. That's not what it is. So everybody, for the most part, is afraid of rejection. And one of the things is, yeah, we get rejected. But really, if you don't take it personally, and all the great ones, they don't take it personally. They just keep persevering, right? You've met some of those people who just go, wow, I wish I could be like them. They're so fearless. They just go at it, no matter what anybody says. You can't be like that if you can get over your fear of being rejected, right? Rejection is part of life. Everybody gets rejected at one point or another. It doesn't kill you, right? But what it really should do is point to where you need to improve your skills, your knowledge, your ability to get results, whatever. Number four, fear of vulnerability. This fear is based on our fear of getting hurt if we open up to others and expose our true inner selves, right? Well, everybody feels vulnerable at some point or another. I think a lot of times relationships, especially relationships with the opposite sex, it prevents a lot of people from going forward because they're afraid of being vulnerable to somebody and sharing who they really are. What if they don't like me? What if I'm not good enough or whatever, right? All these fears. A lot of fears aren't there. Everything you want, this is a great quote, everything you want is on the other side of fear. Let me repeat that. Everything you want is on the other side of fear, which means you've got to learn to face it if you want more, if you want to become more. That was by Jack Canfield, by the way. The combination of these fears can paralyze you. It makes you hesitate to take action, but it doesn't have to. Use your fear of failure to become super successful no matter what your intention is. Maybe it's a complete challenging project at work or start your own business. In America, if you're new to Prime America, for example, you're just beginning to start your own business. The fear of failure can paralyze you. Making those phone calls, going on appointments, asking people for appointments, asking people for checks holds you back and puts your emotions in control, but you can take back control by embracing fear as a growth tool. There's all this path experience that we're afraid of, but once we got going and we started doing it, those things that were... Even like when you start a job for the first day, you're a little bit nervous. You're really nervous about the whole thing, but when you start doing it day after day, the thing that you were so afraid of becomes comfortable. In fact, you actually probably in some cases enjoy it. For me, I had a fear of speaking in public. It terrified me to do that. The first time I did it, I was absolutely horrible. Then I just said, well, I can't get any worse, so I just kept on doing it. Pretty soon I got to the point where I actually enjoy it and look forward to it. I've got a couple of big speaking engagements over the next couple of weeks. In the past, I'd be a complete nervous wreck. Now, I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait. I know it's going to turn out great. I know it's going to be fun. I know a lot of people are going to benefit in a pretty significant way, so it's great. I look forward to it, but I didn't always feel that way. Life is short, fragile, and does not wait for anyone. There will never be a perfect time to pursue your dreams or goals. There's no perfect time. There's no perfect time to have kids. You have them, and then you deal with it. Top professional athletes and entrepreneurs are not immune to the paralyzing effects of fear of failure, but they have learned to handle it with a little outside help. Right now, there are a few guys that are playing professional golf that I help a little bit and work with their mental part of their game and offer advice and that sort of thing. They're some of the best in the whole planet. They're really great, but they have those same kinds of fears. They just do. Everybody does. Everybody you see that's having huge success, they're feeling those things just like you're feeling them. The difference is the ones that become great, the ones that do great, the ones that become wealthy and super successful, they move forward in spite of the fear. They just keep going, and then at some point, they learn how to deal with it. Does it ever go away 100%? No, never, but it gets manageable. That's the whole deal. It gets to the point where you increase your skills and your knowledge and you know what you're doing, and you can manage it. It doesn't petrify you or paralyze you anymore. It just makes you nervous a little bit until you get going, just like it did with the speaking thing. It made me really nervous in the beginning. Now, not so much. It's better. Do I get a little anxious? Of course, a little bit, but I know I've done it so much now that I know it's going to be okay once I get going, and it will be for you as well. So even better, the strategies used to battle fear of failure also have a direct positive impact on how you approach your professional life. They make you amazingly focused because when you're nervous, you get really focused. It helps you do business feeling supercharged. In my career over 10 years coaching top professionals in Europe and North America, I've used a variety of strategies to help my clients overcome their fear of failure. Let me show you how you can overcome it, too. Here are some of the ideas. There are six strategies. You combine the following six strategies to create your own strategic success plan. Number one, this is very important. I talk about this a lot because this is one of the reasons, I believe. Number one, I've had a lot of success. I've had a lot of success in my life, and it's also how I've been able to stay focused for so many years. I've been at it for over 30 years now, and I'm super focused right now. I'm still focused. I'm still excited. Do you know why? It's because I'm crystal clear on what I'm trying to accomplish. I know what I want. I know what I'm trying to do, and so every day it's easy to stay motivated and focused and take action when you know exactly what you're going for. One of the problems is if you ask most people, what do you want? What are your goals? Where do you want to be in two, five, ten years? What do you want your life to look like? Where do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle do you want to experience? All that. If you ask most people, they can't tell you. They don't know. They don't really know what they want. If you don't really know what you want, it can be very difficult to stay focused and stay motivated and stay on it. You've got to get crystal clear. That's a term I use a lot. You've got to get crystal clear on your goals. They've got to be in writing. You've got to write down your goals and what you want to achieve in the next 12 months and then subdivide them into smaller, easier, achievable goals. Daily, weekly, monthly goals so that at the end of the year you achieve your ultimate, maybe your income goes to like $100 or $200 or $500 or even a million dollars a year. You can write that down. You create a plan to do that. Be as precise as you can be. If you don't know where you want to go, you won't know how to get there. You won't even know how to ask directions or what you're looking for. Because you're going to need help along the way. Nobody gets there by themselves. But you've got to know exactly where you're going and that will allow you to focus. Also, if you don't know exactly how to get there, to look for the help and ask the right questions and get the help you need to get there. You've got to know where you're going. Knowing where you should go gives you confidence. Once you know where you're going, what you want, how you want it to look, what you want to do, all that, you get a little more confident. Then you just start looking for what's the route to get there, what's the easiest, fastest, best way to get there. Every goal achieved is a success and makes you feel successful. Every little goal that you accomplish as you're going towards it, you've got to build on that. You've got to really think about that you're making progress, that you're moving forward. Number two, identify the obstacles preventing you from achieving your goals. Contrary to most beliefs, obstacles are not a bad thing as long as you can identify them. If you know what your obstacles are, then you know how to remove them. You have more to do than you have time. One possible solution would be outsourcing, which means getting help. In my business, it's getting a secretary of state, for example. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but you don't have to be doing every single thing. There's something that somebody else can do. Whatever somebody else can do, you need to figure out a way to get somebody else to do that. I think one of the reasons I've had a lot of success and have been able to focus on the most productive thing possible at every given moment is everything that I don't physically, personally have to do, I have someone else do. I've always done that. I've never had any problem investing money in my business to hire people to help me take care of stuff so that I can focus on what actually brings in the most revenue, the thing that allows my business to be successful. You've got to learn how to do that. If you're doing every single thing yourself, at some point as your business grows and you start making decent income, you've got to have help. You've got to hire help. You've got to get people to take some of the load off so that you can focus on the very things in my business. It's training people. It's recruiting people. It's closing transactions. That's where I need to be. In order for me to do that, a lot of the administration, for example, I have other people do that, all those kinds of things. Limiting that obstacle between doing your goal means clearing the way towards your goal and therefore towards success. Knowing your enemy, which is the obstacle, gives you confidence. You know what that is. You know what's holding you back. Are you able to invest all the energy you possibly can in the very thing that allows you to be successful or not? Make a list of your obstacles and your fear of failure will decrease significantly. I learned, this is Nelson Mandela's quote, I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear. Nelson Mandela, that's a great quote there by the late Nelson Mandela. Number three, plan how to overcome your obstacle. Write out exactly how and when you'll overcome your obstacles. Not only does this create a plan to follow but it puts you in a positive emotional state. Since your brain cannot attend to opposite signals simultaneously, it cannot maintain fear of failure any longer and that puts you back in control. Your fear will have passed by now but you have a blueprint that leads you directly to success which should be part of any good businessman anyway. Number four, embrace choice. If something doesn't work out as expected don't see it as a failure. See it as a conclusion to a shift into a different direction that offers another opportunity for a successful outcome. Business means constant change and adapting. It's not a sign of failure but rather good business sense. One of the things about making a mistake like if you make a choice but it's not the right choice, guess what? You get to make another choice. All you need to do is make another choice in another direction. You don't have to beat yourself up. You don't have to tell yourself you're a loser and you can't do anything right. What you do is make a new choice and if that doesn't work you make another new choice. It's always making another new choice. Nobody is perfect. I've made tons of mistakes along the way in my career but I never let that become who I was. I said, okay, well that didn't work. Let me try this. I'll try another way. Even when I'm trying to close a transaction with a potential client I don't close. I close everybody. I find out what I did. I'd actually literally ask the client if I didn't close I'd say, Mr. or Mrs. Jones just so that I don't make this same mistake again in the future with another client that I know without a doubt that I can help just like I know I can help you. I know you're not going forward today. I understand that. I appreciate that but I don't want to make this mistake. I know that you would benefit tremendously from what I'm talking about, what we're offering here but for whatever reason I didn't portray this in a way that it makes enough sense for you to go forward. Could you tell me the real reason why you're not going ahead so I don't make the same mistake with another qualified client like yourself? Then I'd shut up and I'd help me because even if I didn't close I wanted to find out why aren't they going forward? What did I do wrong? What did I not say? What information did I not give them that they needed to feel comfortable to go forward? I wanted to know what that was. Whether I closed a transaction or recruited I always wanted to know so that I could fix that so in the future I could maybe insert that and overcome that objection whatever it might be in the body of my presentation. I was always asking people why aren't you going forward? Let me know so I don't make the same mistake with the next person I meet with. You should always ask that question. 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