7 WAYS TO OVERCOME FEAR OF FAILING IN BUSINESS VENTURES
By Avid A Solution | 30 August 2018 | Entrepreneur
Fear can only defeat you if you let it. The only way for fear to win is if you do nothing. So let's beat this fear today for once and for all.
Number 1. Have a plan
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A business plan is a road map to operate your business progressively. Without a specific plan, your chances of success is very low.
Then again, success means different things to different people. As a business owner, you have the power to decide what that is.
It is tempting to feel overwhelmed with no sense of direction but common sense dictates that when you don't know something, the logical thing to do is to find answers.
My question to you now is what are your plans? What are you going to do after reading this article? What are you going to do tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year?
If the answer is `I don't know’, I suggest you start with ,Why are you trying to build the business in the first place? If the answer is to make `more money’, then you need to create a much more compelling answer than just money.
Because money doesn't grow on trees. If building a business is easy, then we're all should have been a billionaire by now.
Number 2. Change your negative mindset
Do you always think what you're doing is wrong? Then, you need to change that mindset. How do you know what you're doing is wrong? Who said that it is wrong?
Do you have a proven data that said what you're doing is wrong?
If you don't already notice, your mind is your greatest asset. Don't be afraid of it, instead be friends with it. It has all the answers you've been seeking for.
The first step to changing negative mind is to remember the time in your life that you were the most happy. What did that feel like?
How can you recreate that feeling, so that you have a better outlook in your current situation?
Number 3. Evaluate your abilities
It's really hard to evaluate yourself, if you have never practiced self-awareness before. To learn it though is as simple as brushing your teeth.
When you evaluate yourself, notice what skill you're lacking to build a business. Such as marketing? Sales? Planning? Time management? Prioritizing? Problem solving?
It's easy to feel self-doubt when evaluating yourself, but the purpose is to evaluate without judgment.
Pretend you're evaluating a car for the very first time.
What is your approach when looking at buying a new car? Is it the interior? The exterior? The engine? I bet you weren't so judgmental when evaluating several cars.
It's same way when evaluating yourself.
Take a piece of paper and evaluate yourself without judgment. Give yourself a score. Zero means poor skill and 10 means excellent skill.
Do this as if you're looking at yourself from a window for the very first time.
Number 4. Learn what you don't know
When you evaluate yourself without judgment successfully, you'll discover there are certain things that you don't know.
Common sense dictates that when you do not know something, the logical thing to do is to seek for answers. And that's what you should do.
Why do we learn something in the first place? Is it to pass an exam?
Maybe so when we're in school but in the real world it's to understand more about the things that we don't know, so we have the confident to take actions.
Number 5. Learn from experts
Experts or successful people have overcame the challenges that you're facing at this very moment.
Most of them even shared their secret and you can get access to it at no cost but you may need to spend some time to evaluate the validity of their claims.
That can take hours even days but the chances of you eliminating those mistakes is higher. So, how do you determine the validity of their claims?
First, you need to look at their credentials. How did they become an expert? Are their messages similar to other experts in the field? Are their claims supported by scientific data?
Most of the experts have supportive evidence for their claims. For those that do not have supportive evidence, I'd be careful if I were you.
There are so many experts now a day and try not to believe everything you read even this article.
Number 6. Accept the mistakes you made in the past
Everyone makes mistakes, so don't feel like you're the only one with bad lucks. The difference between you and the rest of us is that we tend to accept our mistakes as lesson learned.
We believe without mistakes we don't know what is right. Some lessons include listening to other people's advice when we should've listen to our own intuition.
How about the time we failed to look at factual truth? My favourite one is making decisions without evaluating all the facts.
We've all been there. But we choose to laugh at our amateur moments and decide not to be so naive and gullible from that moment on.
To avoid making the same mistake, we had to go back to our drawing boards, scratched what's not working and brainstorm new ideas. At this point, blaming others leads to no solutions, hence, no action.
Number 7. Record your daily accomplishments
How can you accomplish the impossible when all you do is dwell on the negatives? No wonder you've been living in fear. I see fear as a darkness.
How do you navigate through the darkness? By shedding some lights into the darkness, so it'll become light again. Your daily accomplishments are your lights in this dark journey.
When you record all the completed tasks in a notebook, you will feel a sense of achievement even if it's only something minor like waking up 7 in the morning to start answering emails.
No one is going to praise you for all your hard work, if you don't give one for yourself.
Number 8. Set higher goals for yourself
To achieve greatness, you must set higher standard for yourself every single day. Period.
If you just want to make a small amount of money with your business, I suggest you close the shop now because you're wasting your time and energy.
But if you want to be listed in Forbes magazine, I suggest you set higher goals and standards for yourself and your business today.
Without aiming high, you will not be able to compete with your competitors and eventually you'll be tapped out.
So what do you want, to be number one or to be squashed like a bug? You decide now or this article is full of poo.
Moving Foward
Overcoming fear of failing is easy. First you need to have a plan and discard your old ways of thinking.
Most importantly, you need to evaluate yourself without judgment, so you be aware of what you need to work on.
If you don't know something, always seek for answers better yet emulate the experts but make sure their credentials are legit.
If for some reason you go back to your old ways of thinking, thank your mind, accept the past, recall the lesson learned and create an action plan.
Also, when you feel overwhelmed by abundance of work, take a moment to congratulate yourself for a job well done. You deserve it.
Lastly, don't forget to aim high. If you accomplished one goal, set another bigger goals and don't stop setting higher goals until there's no more goals left to set.
Fear is false evidence appearing real. You only fail if, you do nothing.