In this blog post will be covering how the fear of failure may be sabotaging your ability to launch and scale a profitable business and what you can do about it.
Keep reading if you recognise yourself in any of these scenarios.
You may have been thinking of starting a business for quite some time, yet every time you entertain the idea you have this fear that arises within you that stops you from doing anything to start it.
Or you know you have the means and the ability to make improvements to your life, but you for some reason you haven’t been taking the required action to make it a reality.
And objectively, you know you’re not stupid or worthless, but deep down it feels like something inside is holding you back.
If you can relate then keep watching to find out why this fear of failure is happening and what you can do about it.
Table of Contents
What is a fear of failure and where does it come from?
Fear of failure quite literally stems from a necessity to be seen as perfect. You over analyze even the smallest of tasks, constantly scan what other people are doing and judge yourself harshly for making the tiniest of errors. Errors that someone else just wouldn’t even notice.
This need to be perfect is rooted in a deep seated sense of shame for who you are as a person.
And that sense of shame gets created when an individual’s parents fail to respond appropriately to a child’s bids for safety and connection.
This isn’t to bash your parents, but rather to recognise that this all happens at a very early age and is not something that you personally have control over. They most likely had the same conditioning instilled on them by their parents, and the cycle continues until someone bravely addresses the unconscious dynamics and brakes the family curse.
What happens when shame is your core emotion is that your ego creates a perfect outward persona and this is to protect itself from ever having to connect with that deep sense of feeling broken that really lives inside.
You could think of this as a mask that you have to wear to prevent further harm to the authentic you that still resides in the core of your psyche.
And, at some point, that sense of shame becomes too much to bare, so that too gets locked away, out of the reach of your conscious mind.
So you have two elements locked into shadow, your authentic self, that didn’t feel good enough growing up, and the toxic shame that was projected onto you through the messaging of your childhood.
While this falsely engineered shame has been locked in a box and is not present at a conscious level, it manifests in day to day life through overly self-critical thoughts, impulsive behaviours and a short fuse that makes you highly irritable during triggering situations.
Ultimately, this is not a mindset that is built for success in an entrepreneurial marketplace.
As you go about trying to build your business you may find that you are seemingly indecisive while also being extremely impulsive – meaning you may make a large investment in your business at a whim, without thinking through the longer term implications.
Or are you jumping from one strategy to another, without that deep inner reflection that’s required to know whether it’s a good fit for YOU.
This can put you are in a constant state of anxiety, either because you know you’re procrastinating on key decisions in your business or you act without careful planning and deep inside something is warning you that you are about to make a huge mistake,. The trouble is that you are so tuned out of your inner guidance it doesn’t register enough to heed the warning.
When this type of behaviour leads to negative outcomes it can quickly cause you to lose trust in yourself and throw the towel in altogether. This is because rather than view these situations as learning opportunities that can help you grow into a stronger entrepreneur, you view it as something wrong with the essence of who you are.
And secretly you know that it’s your negative mindset and self-judgement that is the root of the majority of your issues, but that conscious awareness alone isn’t enough to shift the deep seated patterns of self-abandonment.
This constant negative inner dialogue won’t allow you to try new things, especially if that thing runs the risk of sabotaging your carefully constructed perfectionist image.
This issue is further compounded when families overly focus on validation through image and results.
It gives a message that your worth is tied to what you do rather than who you are, making doing anything new, that you obviously aren’t going to be the best at when you are just starting out, impossible to do.
When this happens you will typically spend your entire life trying to avoid any and all forms of discomfort and pain, and there are lots of those when starting out as an entrepreneur!
How does a fear of failure impact your business today as an entrepreneur?
Let’s dive deeper into the many ways this fear can hold you back from launching a business idea and scaling it to consistent profitable months, thereby blocking you from ever making an impact in the world and creating the purpose filled lifestyle your soul desires.
Stalling
Firstly, you may never get started – the business idea just keeps playing out in your head like a fantasy with no concrete steps to bring it from your mind and into reality.
This could look like always being in a start-up phase, where you create endless plans and product ideas, but nothing tangible that someone else can critique or work with.
Or you daydream about your product launch as a means of escape during your commute to the office and then forget about it as soon as your day job takes over.
Lastly, you may set some big vision stretch goals to hit £10 or even £20k months, and write the shopping list of what you’ll acquire when you hit those juicy targets, without any defined strategy to get you there.
Let’s not fool ourselves this is not how manifestation works. To successfully bring an idea to life there needs to be an equal balance of building a mental image in your mind and taking consistent daily action towards the goal for it to materialise in the 3D world.
Product Development
The second way a fear of failure can hold you back as an entrepreneur is during product development, which I touched on briefly before.
This may manifest as an overwhelming fear that the service or product you create won’t actually help someone.
This fear makes you constantly tweak your service design, without ever letting it loose on another living soul and keeps you in an endless cycle of procrastination and busy work, without ever seeking the client feedback that is critical to iterate and grow.
A quick litmus test here is, did the service you are about to launch help you? If the answer is yes then you really need to focus on mindset and execution to undo this psychological block.
Marketing
Thirdly, all things marketing can get sabotaged pretty fast when there is an underlying need to be perfect which is driven from that shadowy fear of failure.
Through the conditioning from toxic shame you were taught to hide parts of yourself to fit in and feel safe, thereby putting your authentic self into shadow. This sent a subtle but powerful message that there were negative repercussions for speaking your truth.
This may now manifest now as hypervigilance to what you say and how other people react to your message. When talking to people you are likely to have a conversation happening out loud, while a separate conversation is happening inside your head, carefully monitoring for slight shifts in mood, body language and eye contact.
This hypervigilance will cause you to water down your marketing message to help keep you safe.
When you do this your content will most likely appeal to more people, as it is less likely to trigger their own subconscious shadows, but is also less likely to speak to your ideal client.
When you act this way you effectively end up speaking to no one.
This is because when you sit in the middle of a topic, no one is put off by your message, so you do not receive the negatively polarised people to interact with you, but the people at the positive end of the spectrum won’t be magnetised to it either.
This behaviour to self-police your ideas and opinions often stems as a fear of judgement from others – if it wasn’t safe to hold an opposing view to your parents then you probably feel scared holding an opposing view to other people now.
We are social creatures and the idea of being rejected by the tribe takes us back to the days of roaming the savannah. Most don’t want to get visible on social media as there is this deeply rooted subconscious fear of rejection from the tribe, which would have ultimately led to death, that is just too powerful a drive for the conscious mind alone to overcome.
That is why it is so important to make these unconscious fears, conscious and inspect them with a rational mind to take away some of the intensity of the fear and allow you to get started with sharing your honest opinion and promoting your brand.
Sales
Another part of the business that is negatively influenced by a fear of failure is in sales, which largely boils down to a fear of hearing no.
And in sales you will hear a lot of no’s.
In fact, objection handling is one of the key skills that are taught during the sales school and is actually seen as a good sign by talented sales people, as it indicates that the potential buyer is seriously weighing up your product or service.
A no during the sales process is more than likely a reflection of something happening inside the potential buyers head, that can be a useful learning exercise for you.
Perhaps they don’t fully understand the value of what you offer or maybe their mind has a different perception around money and affordability.
The more you can get inside your prospective clients head and see the world from their perspective the easier a time you will have during this inevitable part of the sales process.
One way you can help make the sales process less about you is to reflect on whether they are really saying no to you as a person, or whether it is a no to the service you are offering as it is just not right for them today.
Follow Up
Something else that can be negatively influenced is the follow up process, which is another one that is closely linked to the sales process and the underlying fear of rejection.
Follow up is simply reaching out to old leads for an update with where they are at and whether their circumstances have changed enough to make them ready to buy now.
Of course, within this process there is a high likelihood of hearing no and that could trigger those unconscious feelings of shame that then lead to very real conscious acts of self-sabotage.
You might find that you become more argumentative with your loved ones or start binge watching TV shows until the late hours of the night, writing off the next days productivity.
And this is a real shame, as it is statistically noted that most sales happen after 7 or more follow ups, so failing to reach out is really leaving money on the table.
As well as working through the unconscious shame, which we’ll get to in a minute, a useful phrase to keep in mind here is, “it is only a no for today,” and just be super friendly and polite when chasing for an update.
Scaling
Lastly, there may be a fear around scaling, which is really a fear of success and this can also be linked to a fear of failure.
Wait, what?
Well, even with success there can be a fear that you won’t be able to cope with the expansion of your business, and this lack of belief in yourself to manage more ‘work’ can inadvertently halt you in your tracks.
You might find yourself completing less important tasks first and the ones that bring in the money always get left to the bottom of the pile.
Or perhaps you keep jumping strategies after a few weeks, without allowing enough data to pour in for you to really assess what is or isn’t working.
All this leads to a lot of ‘busy’ work, without meaningful data or results and is a way that the ego kids itself that it is doing a great job, while you stay stuck.
As you can see it’s clear from this list that the fear of failure has the potential to negatively impact every step of business growth, from seeding ideas to marketing and client acquisition, each one can be quickly sabotaged if the underlying fear of failure is not dealt with effectively.
How you can overcome the fear of failure?
Now we’ve looked at the ways a fear of failure is impacting your business growth, we’re going to explore the ways you can overcome it. Because, trust me, it really doesn’t have to be this way and there is absolutely empowered action you can take to remove these subconscious barriers and grow your business.
When I work with clients in Become Unshakeable, there are typically three levels that need to be re-programmed to see fast results.
They are your conscious mind, subconscious mind and your central nervous system.
For the conscious mind, we can use tools such as mindfulness, thought correction exercises and affirmations to re-programme any negative thought loops that are sabotaging you from believing in yourself and taking action.
For the subconscious mind, the first step is to identify what beliefs, values and identity stories are playing out at the unconscious level. We can surface these using the shadow, visualisation exercises and also the wisdom held within the emotion body. From there we can use inner child-reparenting, parts work or emotional releasement work to change the underlying story, which will naturally free you to take action towards your goal and create new patterns in your life.
The great news here is we do not need to get into the story to change the pattern, but can solely work with the energies that present today to create powerful shifts, so new dynamics can emerge.
For the central nervous system, this is all about the ability to self-regulate back to a parasympathetic state when the exposure of triggers do happen.
Minimising the dysregulation response will also tamper all the unhelpful self-soothing behaviours that go with that, it will create a calmer mind to make sensible business decisions from, you’ll buy back so much of your time to do productive work and your relationships with others will be less volatile.
You will find that your triggers will naturally calm down with the work that is completed with the subconscious mind and can be further reinforced with a tool called focalising. This is a really gentle way to explore what is stored in the body at a cellular level and it doesn’t matter if the trigger happened at a pre-verbal stage in development, the underlying unconscious patterns can still be reprogrammed working with the body/mind connection in session.
Once these three layers of awareness have been addressed you will find you can get more done in less time, have more energy to spend on building your business and will feel a lot more positive taking action, as you won’t have that constant negative monologue pulling you down.
That said throughout this journey, it is important to stay kind to yourself. In the same way that a baby must make multiple attempts to learn how to walk, you too should expect that you will fall down a few times as you attempt to undo years of habitual unconscious patterns.
This is why it can be really helpful to work with a coach or therapist who can celebrate in your successes, while also offering helpful tools and guidance when things don’t quite go to plan.
The more you can frame this as a passage towards personal growth and away from perfectionism the more fun you will experience and the more success you will have along the way.
What happens when you overcome it?
So, what is on the other side of the fear of failure?
Here are some positive outcomes that you can expect as a business owner:
Unprecedented Personal Transformation
You will experience unprecedented personal growth that will last you a lifetime. This is one aspect of the investment that is priceless. Having dealt with the unconscious fears, you will emerge as an authentic, confident, secure and grounded individual; this positive shift in mindset will serve you better no matter what action you take next in your life.
That new-found, rock-solid confidence will give you permission to try new things and expand into your full potential.
You may choose to connect with more people over social media, attend live networking events, create more meaningful content, feel happier showing your face in your branding and finally get around to book that brand photo shoot and have a laugh there while you’re at it; you will feel comfortable being the centre of attention, charge what you’re worth and no longer fear hearing the word ‘no.’
Freedom To Try New Things
It will also give you the freedom to try new things and work collaboratively with others, as you won’t feel pressured to “be the best” from the get go, this includes being more open to learn from others and work in a team, as you won’t be so centered around your ‘failings,’ but instead be interested in which gifts each person brings to the table.
This honest look at your natural skill set could give you the permission to offload work to a VA so you can focus on what you are good at, pitch to attend podcasts or join forces with other business owners who have parallel products and cross sell to their audiences.
Trust Your Own Inner Wisdom
From this new sense of confidence and openness, you will naturally find that new business opportunities appear in your life – as you will have more flexibility around what that road to ‘success’ could look like.
Without the egos need to pre-plan things to the nth degree, you feel more comfortable not needing to know how the plan will unravel.
Releasing the fear of failure allows you to try new things and not get caught up on the result, but rather enjoy the process, synchronicities can arise with this expansion in personal energy, as the ego steps aside and your goals flow from the intuition that is held deep within the subconscious mind.
All of this means you get to experience more joy, fun and creativity as you launch and scale business projects.
You become more present and mindful in your business, rather than anxiously projecting worry into a future that hasn’t even happened yet and robbing yourself of a positive experience with where you are right now.
Shine Bright As Your Authentic Self And Become Magnetic In The Marketplace
You’ll also be able to post original marketing material that represents your brand and is more likely to connect you with your ideal client.
This is a client who sees the value of the investment and is more likely to pay higher rates for the service and actually benefit from what you offer.
In this way, your marketing is more likely to reflect your authentic personality and so it will be harder for other people to emulate what you do, thereby stopping bidding wars with competitors.
Iterate Your Product Suite
And you’ll also feel more comfortable launching products in Beta phase and adapt them with early adopter clients. This will free you test new products knowing they will never be perfect, but will rather be driven from a desire for excellence. An open and transparent acknowledgement that you are forever learning and will always strive to serve your clients better.
Sell From The Heart
Lastly, you will be able to enter into the sales process with openness and curiosity for your prospective clients situation, allowing you to appear more human and caring during this sensitive window of engagement, which will ultimately make them more likely to buy from you.
By showcasing you naturally care for the wellbeing of others you are going to increase sales, referrals and testimonials with ease.
As you can see, there are many benefits that quickly become apparent when you tackle the fear of failure head on. From testing new products, to marketing your business and securing a steady stream of new clients, all aspects of business growth will be positively impacted by your own personal growth.
Conclusion
I hope this post has helped you to explore exactly why addressing your fear of failure is essential to launch your business, connect with your clients and positively impact your bottom line.
From helping you to be more emotionally resilient, to being able to effectively plan and execute a strategy, your business has a much better opportunity to thrive with a leader who feels positive, regulated and confident in your ability to try new things.
So with all that being said, let me know in the comment section below: What’s one empowered action you’d take today if failure wasn’t an option?