Let me show you something amazing...
A few days ago, I was working with a friend of mine who’s trying to build a business. He was getting stressed out because things weren’t going well and he was getting overwhelmed, so I gave him a hand in sorting out his head and his supposed “fear of failure”. One of the things I found when working with him was a pattern I’ve been noticing more and more lately.
At first, he thought his issue was about not having the money he needed. That, however, is just the end of the process, not the cause of the real problem. The real problem is where he gets stopped in doing the things that will lead to him making money, but because he was generalizing “money” as the cause of his problems, he couldn’t see the real problems because he was so focused on that end result.
So here’s the pattern. People focus on the easy answer. Money seems awfully important, so it must be the one thing holding him back, right? Not so much. But this is the kind of thinking that people latch on to like ticks. Give people an important-sounding general answer that SEEMS to solve their problem, and they’re all over it. This is an extremely common pattern, and it covers up the real issue.
So what was his real issue? Well, there were several things he needed to do, and he needed to delegate some of them and actually do others. One thing he acknowledged he had to do was get the word of mouth going and talk to people about what he does. His reason for why he wasn’t doing it was that he was afraid of failure. I mean, it makes sense, right?
Fear of failure does not exist. It’s just an excuse. And, really, very few people are actually afraid of failure. Let me tell you why.
The REAL issue was how he felt when talking about himself to strangers. Talking about himself made him feel selfish, which was driven by feelings of alone, guilt, and helplessness. The problem was that he was avoiding those 3 feelings! He’d THINK about going out to talk to people, and those associated feelings would pop up before he even began to take action, and it would stop him because he wanted to avoid those feelings.
That’s the problem with our minds, sometimes. They build a picture of what we plan to do complete with emotional garbage, and that emotional garbage is what stops us even if we don’t directly experience it. We then put a lot of effort into trying to avoid it, including trying to explain it in terms that we can comfortably understand such as, “I have a fear of failure.”
You may have noticed, though, that in the real problem, nowhere did “failure” actually show up since it was really about feeling selfish. Most of the time when someone thinks they’re trying to avoid failure, they’re really just avoiding how they project that they will feel when they try in the first place. You see, failure is something that happens AFTER you take action, but most people have crappy emotions associated to taking action itself! Things like feeling alone, guilt, or helplessness get associated to the thought of taking a particular action and those feelings are what you actually avoid, which causes the problem that you attempt to explain with a rationalization like “fear of failure”. Bear in mind, of course, that for every person, and every situation the emotional drivers can be different.
So with all this in mind, let me make a suggestion. Skip your reasons and explanations for why you do what you do, and look instead for the feelings that are there that you’re trying to avoid. A question that I’ve been using lately is “What’s the worst part of doing X.” This gets me closer to the real issue so I don’t have to do as much digging. When you can get it down to just 3 simple feelings that you’re trying to avoid, then you know what the real problem is and you don’t have to make up silly explanations like “I have a fear of failure.”
It’s much easier that way.
Oh, and the end result, by the way, was that with the selfish feeling balanced out, the idea of talking to people just felt natural and he couldn’t conceive of having a fear of failure. In fact, he felt like he could go right ahead and make his business happen.
Like I said, much easier. 
