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THIS IS SOMETHING THAT will hold you back if you don’t tackle it. Fear of failure is something that will rob you of confidence and that may just rob you of years of your life if you let it. It can make problems seem enormous. It can make meetings with people stressful and it can also make you lack confidence in all kinds of situations. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is self-destructive. Do you really think that small child that you were would have given up trying to walk the first time that he/she fell over? Of course not, but adults hijack their own chances at success by thinking of worse case scenarios. The thing is that even if you don’t get the job that you applied for, at the end of the day, there are always going to be more opportunities. It isn’t the end of the world.
So how do you tackle fear of failure? There is a great way to deal with this aspect of your life. You need to understand that confidence is not genetic. There is no scientific hint that you actually inherited a lack of self-confidence. Once you understand that, you must also understand that the way that you see yourself is really down to you, based on the interactions that you have with other people and experiences you have of failure. You feel like you are a failure, simply because at some stage in your life, you have failed. Thus, you need to change that amount of fear. It’s normal to have a small amount of nervousness when you go for a new job or when you come across situations that you have not dealt with before. That’s healthy and it makes you cautious. However, because you have a lack of confidence or faith in yourself, your fear is greater.
Thus, to get around this fear, you need to work on areas of your life that are in your control to give you the sense of being in control of your life and feeling less worthless. When you do this it actually helps you in many ways. It boosts your confidence levels and when you can get your confidence levels higher, you are not as fearful as those who do not venture to actually achieve anything. So what things can make you feel more confident?
● Look at little tasks that you have to do and make a list
● Work through these tasks and congratulate yourself when you achieve them
● Clear your desk of paperwork
● Make your home neater – one little bit at a time
What you are doing is getting your life within your own control, one little task at a time. Choose tasks that you know that you can perform. For instance, if you try to tackle cleaning the whole house, you are likely to fail. If your confidence levels are low, don’t try to climb mountains. Take the tasks and break them down into manageable lumps. For example, instead of cleaning the whole house, clean the bathroom. Task done, confidence levels boosted. Clean out a kitchen cupboard – task done – confidence level boosted. Every time that you achieve something positive, you begin to feel better about yourself and it doesn’t matter how small those tasks are. Each of them is a step toward achievement. If it has taken you most of your life to get where you are at, you cannot expect to get over the fear overnight. Thus, make lists of small jobs that you know you have been neglecting and do them one at a time taking great pleasure in crossing them off your list and seeing an achievement carried out.
Improve your self-image
This helps you with your fear levels. If you know that you look good, this boosts your confidence no end. Stand in front of a mirror and look how you look now without any particular effort. Take a photo because you need to remind yourself of how far you have come. Now, start to dress from the inside out. That means having a shower and feeling yourself all fresh and clean and taking care about what underwear you wear. If you have underwear that is too tight, what this creates is bulges, particularly on women. Women who struggle to accept that they have put on weight tend to hold onto that old underwear such as bras, and when they do, what they create is a really lumpy look. Get over it and buy a bra that fits. You will be nicely surprised when you do because you lose those lumps. The small bra is actually pulling you in, so as a consequence, you get all these ridges that show through your clothes. You may have a bra that’s a size or two larger, but you will be more comfortable and you will actually look slimmer.
Don’t wear panties that leave ridges. These show and make you super conscious about them and when you are trying to lose the fear, you need to start at very basics, so that you are not always looking at yourself and criticizing what you see. That’s vital. How can you be happy with yourself if you look like a sack of potatoes gathered up in the middle by a waistband? Now try on different clothing and see what feels good. You need total comfort because anything less than this and you will be consistently self-criticizing. If your waist band is too tight adjust it or get yourself clothes that fit comfortably. You can look every bit as tailored but you need to choose styles that flatter your body shape.
Wear shoes that you can walk in confidently and make sure that they are clean. The problem with wearing heels is that if you are wobbling your way through life, it doesn’t help your confidence levels and it makes you feel clumsy and awkward. The idea of all of this is to help you to gain confidence and believe me, when you dress from the inside out, and take care with your choices, you can look stunning.
You may have avoided getting your roots done or you may not have been to the hairdresser for a while. See if you can fit in an appointment and finish the look by having a style that is easy to look after but which is sufficiently flattering to your face shape. If you visit a hairdresser that has experience as a beautician, the chances are that she trained to know what kind of style suits what kind of faces.
The reason that grooming is of importance is because it instantly puts a positive slant on your life. You wake up, you wash, you dress and you feel good about yourself. You are not constricted by waistlines that are too skinny and you are not tripping over shoes that are uncomfortable. You are not always looking down to see if your belly is showing and you are not going to have to worry about what people see when you bend down. These are all things that get in the way of confidence, so when you have taken these away, you are less fearful of life. Most of the fear comes from how you fit into a situation and if you are not correctly groomed then chances are that you will fear interaction with others because you feel you don’t measure up and perhaps you don’t. When you take the time to groom yourself however, you feel much more confident about mixing with others and don’t have to keep criticizing yourself for ill-fitting clothing or lack of confidence it causes.
When you have done this, take another photograph because it will show you that within a short space of time, you actually boosted your confidence levels and took away much of the fear that you have inside you about how others see you. I am not suggesting you spend hours and hours in the bathroom each day trying to do immaculate makeup. I am talking about you wearing clothing that looks good and is your correct size and turning yourself out as a confident person with a style of hair that suits you. You will start to feel more confident and will know which items in your closet really don’t do you justice. It’s time to make this one of your small tasks.
Place all of your clothing and underwear onto the bed and have two large black sacks at the ready. One will be to give to a homeless shelter for people that don’t have anything. One will be rubbish because we all have things that haunt us in our closet. The panties with no elastic, the bras that don’t fit any more and the socks with holes in can all be placed in the sack, so that you don’t have to plow through these things in order to groom yourself. Don’t forget the shoes. If you have shoes that you wobble in, get rid of them because they are damaging your self-confidence and certainly do you no favors in the fear department. If you are afraid to put your next foot forward, there’s no wonder you have self-confidence problems!
