Fear of failure

What happens if you try and fail? What does that look like? If fear of failure is holding you back from change, run the tape through to the end. I'd bet it doesn't look as bad as you think. In fact, it might just look like now.

If… then statements are a powerful tool in our pursuit of behavior change. One of the biggest things holding many of my clients back is the fear of failure.

It’s hard to want to try new things or try again for weight loss or adding exercise when you look back and see a string of failures. We aren’t likely to add up all the successes along the way but rather look to the outcome as something that didn’t stick. And that colors everything going forward.

But what if, rather than saying what if, we instead played it out? Instead of just “what if I fail?” we say “if I fail then…”?

What would the outcomes be? Where would that leave us? How would we feel? How would we view our environment? What would we do next?

Oftentimes, we find that our potential future failure looks a lot like our present. So run through that practice again except this time say “if I succeed then…”

And ask yourself if it’s really failure you fear…