Fear of failure

Laura Williams, L J Business Consultancy Ltd, on how to stop letting the fear of failure hold you back

I’m a Virgo which – if you’re familiar with astrology – means on a good day I’m hard working, organised and creative… and on a bad day, I’m an overthinker, worrier and perfectionist.

Perfectionism is something I talk about a lot. As a card-carrying, recovering perfectionist, I talk about my struggles with it to both help others and remind myself that the voice in my head is chatting crap.

Perfectionism is linked to expectation; in the main, our expectations of ourselves.

In my recent free SBL wellbeing session, I encouraged everyone to think about their expectations:
• Where have they come from?
• Are they really yours or are they someone else’s?
• What are they based on?
• What do you think will happen if you don’t meet them?

I know I worry that if something isn’t perfect (by my often-outrageously inflated standards) that I’ll be judged, people will think that I don’t know what I’m talking about and that I’m not good enough.

But what is ‘not good enough’? Who defines it?

Usually, the expectations we have of ourselves are much higher than anybody else’s expectations of us.

Nobody knows what something was intended to look like or what you actually intended to say… we simply know what it does look like and what you did say.

What feels like a failure to us because we didn’t ‘nail it’, can look surprisingly like a resounding success to everyone else!

So why torture ourselves with these ridiculously high expectations?

The truth is – perfectionism, procrastination, self-doubt, imposter syndrome – it’s all from the same tin of ugly soup – fear of failure.

What does failure actually mean? According to the dictionary, it means ‘a lack of success’.

Again… what is ‘success’ and who judges it?

We could go on like this forever!

My point is this:

You get to decide what your expectations are.
You get to decide what good enough is.
You get to decide what success looks like.

And failure?

‘Failure is just an event. It is not a characteristic. People can’t be failures.’ – Judge Victoria Pratt

The next time something doesn’t go exactly according to plan, remember that that doesn’t automatically give you an F!

Maybe it was ‘good enough’, maybe it was better!

So, reel in your expectations to realistic, allow yourself some wiggle-room and you’ll be much better placed to see when you knock it out of the park.

Because I’m sure you do and much more often than you think!