Fear of Failure and how to reach your New Year’s Resolutions anyway.

There’s a brand new year right around the corner. It’s coming and it’s coming fast.

We’re just about to enter the merciless time of New Year’s resolutions, big life decisions and change. Well, at least that’s what we want to believe and want to do and what better time to do it and believe it than at the beginning of a whole new year?

To take advantage of this uprising in motivation and reasons to get things done (especially those that we put off and never seem to get round to doing), we must first get rid of one terrible and potentially devastating factor that may lead to inaction: fear of failing.

We fear failure for many reasons. We may feel we’re not good enough or that we’re simply not able to do something. We may think we don’t have the resources to make it happen. We may just even think that there’s no real point in doing something because the results won’t be ground breaking. Fearing failure may be natural (it is!) but letting it freeze us in our steps isn’t. We can’t let that fear make us avoid doing things, trying things and being all that we can be.

So, here comes the time of resolutions and decisions, of plans and motivation. We fire ourselves up, give ourselves wings and prepare for takeoff full of great intentions and desires. We really want it and, for a while, we’ll do anything we can to get it. We start off, full force, and believe we’ll make it. Until we don’t.

When do people get the most demotivated and quit what they had their heart and mind set on? When they realize they’re not reaching their goals or seeing the desired results fast enough. When they think they have somehow failed, either by not being where they thought they’d be by that time or by not following through and sticking to what they had decided and wanted. Expectations are strongly linked to our fear of failing and they can either make us or break us.

So, for the New Year that’s coming up, here are a few tips for you to become more resilient and be less fearful of failure in your new year resolutions.

1 — Set realistic and attainable goals for yourself

This may seem pretty obvious but the way we set goals and how we execute them has a lot to do with the potential for success.

Set your own goals by being honest with what you want and how much time you’re able (and willing) to dedicate to attaining them. If you want to lose weight, for example, set that goal according to what you can change in your exercise routine and healthy eating habits and be truthful about it. Don’t use other people’s goals or ambitions (let’s face it, if you’re 1.80 m tall, you’re not going to fit into a size 10! Let’s just forget that and focus on you!) to guide you. Use what you can do to help yourself and forget the others (you may not know their story…).

2 — Set your expectations high, but not too high

There’s no fun in going after goals that are easy to get. Anyone can do that. There has to be a challenge along the way and also some kind of reward. Decide what your reward is (you’ll know) and work backwards to the start of reaching that goal, to that very first step. Consider what you’ll have to do to start so you can better decide on the way to the finish line.

The expectations that you create for your journey should be humble but, at the same time, challenging enough to keep you motivated by seeing results. Set them too high and you’ll quickly be asking yourself if it’s worth it, of course, quit. Don’t go there. Be realistic.

3 — Create a plan but don’t write it in stone

Plans are guides that help us get from one point to another. They should be created taking into account everything that we have at our disposal to make them come true — time, resources, energy, money, motivation (etc.). A well thought out plan will always allow for more flexible ways of reaching the desired goals and will not punish you for not sticking to it in absolute.

There’s no need for a plan B when it comes to your goals and aspirations — if you’ve tripped up along the way, just analyze why it happened, learn from it and pick up where you left off. Just keep going and don’t lose sight of what the end goal is. You are not failing if you keep at it. You only fail when you give up and don’t try other ways of getting what you want.

So you had a bad day and didn’t stick to the all-mighty plan? So what?! Make an effort to be keenly aware of what makes you feel like that and promise yourself that, next time, you’ll get through it and not let lack of motivation get in the way of what you so desire. Every journey starts off with one single step. Why should yours be any different?

4 — Decide what failing would be for you

Take a moment to look at your goals, your expectations and your plan and think about what you would consider to be failure. We’re not talking about the ultimate failure of not reaching your goals here but, instead, what failure would look like along the way. You decide what the Fail Factors would be and use them as guide lines to keep you on track, even if you do stray a bit now and then.

5 — Don’t beat yourself up

So your friend managed to do a whole lot of things in a short amount of time and you just can’t seem to even lift off. Before you going making unfair comparisons, check to see that the playing field is even and, of course, fair. You can’t compare what you know about yourself with what you don’t know about others. It simply isn’t fair! Keep reminding yourself that you are you and that if nobody else is going to reach your goals for you, then you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to others in a way that may do you harm or make you feel less motivated. More importantly, never beat yourself up about anything that hasn’t got 100% to do with you (and even then, take it easy!). Beating yourself up will only add to the fearing of failure and make you lose faith in the journey you have decided for yourself.

So, there you have it. Before you go out trying to improve your life through a bunch of resolutions your fear you may not reach, take the time to improve your mind and the way you see yourself actually reaching your desired goals. Make the change to be less fearful of failure, decide what failure really is to you and you alone, and then get busy doing what you have to do. You’ll be glad you did.