Did you know that an “essential prerequisite for success” is failure? This is not great news if you struggle with a fear of failure. Yet, when it’s understood and used as a tool, failure is a powerful component of growth and success.

Read on as we discuss the impact of fearing failure, shifting your mindset, embracing resilience and self-compassion, and practical ways you can use failure as a tool for new opportunities.

What Does Fear of Failure Look Like?

On the surface, a fear of failure seems logical. Who likes to fail? However, fear of failure becomes a problem when it impacts your life, preventing you from expanding past your comfort zone into unknown territory. Without taking risks or trying new things, it’s difficult to reach your goals and grow, both professionally and personally.

Fear of failure doesn’t always manifest as a panic attack or other traditional fear responses. It can look like extreme procrastination or avoidance, staying away from anything that isn’t guaranteed to succeed. When fear of failure is allowed to thrive, it can cause negative self-beliefs, pessimism, helplessness, lower self-esteem, shame, and embarrassment. This can be common with perfectionists, many of whom tie their achievements to their self-worth.

So, what can be done? The first step toward overcoming a fear of failure is to shift your mindset to see failure as an opportunity. Let’s look at how a mindset change can help you move past fear and help you grow.

Shifting Your Mindset First

Have you ever had to do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats) or an AAR (After-Action Report) following an event or program? Then you are already familiar with the concept of a growth mindset. Coined by Carol Dweck, “a growth mindset is the belief that human capacities are not fixed but can be developed over time.” Someone in a growth mindset will see challenges as opportunities to grow and failures as lessons for the future. In contrast, a fixed mindset considers challenges a test of their abilities and failures as only obstacles to success.

Using a growth mindset requires an understanding that failure is not the end—it’s a chance to learn how to improve for next time. The feedback and data received from every failure is invaluable toward refining your approach or improving your strategies. Think of it as an experiment. Make note of what worked and what didn’t. Consider what methods could be adjusted in the future. Approaching lessons learned as a science experiment makes it less personal, which can mitigate some of the emotional response while also improving your problem-solving skills.

If it’s hard to envision this, consider the failures of people that have found success. Pablo Picasso produced over 20,000 pieces of art, the majority of which are not the masterpieces he is known for. Travis Kalanick, a co-founder of Uber, saw his first startup declare bankruptcy. Back when she was a young reporter, Oprah Winfrey was fired. Steve Jobs was forced to resign from Apple before coming back as CEO the following decade. Thomas Edison famously said “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” In other words: failure is normal.

And there is science to support this approach. For example, let’s look at a concept in psychology called “emotional fear learning.” This is when, by avoiding emotions, your brain has been taught that emotions are a threat and will become anxious in response. This creates a feedback loop of then avoiding the anxiety, making it worse the next time because it wasn’t handled. The good news is, recognizing the issue is a large part of the solution. Moreover, our brains can be rewired. Case in point: simply practicing positive affirmations creates new pathways for neurons in the brain, making it easier in the future to think positively. By changing your self-perception, you can give yourself the grace to approach challenges. Let’s look further at how to improve resilience and self-compassion on the path to accepting failure instead of fearing it.

You Are Not Your Failure

How we feel about ourselves can play a significant role in our ability to overcome a fear of failure. One crucial component is self-talk. Being critical of yourself is a breeding ground for other negative emotions, like fear. Self-criticism can act as a protective feature, with the thought process of “If I’m hard on myself first, I can avoid the pain of others being hard on me.” If you find it difficult to give yourself compassion, try to talk to yourself as a supportive friend. Would you talk to your friend the way you talk to yourself? If the answer is no, then it’s time to shift your self-talk and shift the fear.

Try to reflect on even small victories or incremental progress. This helps reinforce positive self-talk and can increase your confidence over time. It’s well documented that humans tend to remember and focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. The antidote to this is intentionally recalling successful outcomes and looking for areas where progress was made. In order for it to work, it must be an active and regular practice, as you are hard wired to do the opposite.

Along those lines, your identity is separate from your outcomes. Your failures don’t define you. Who you are is not dependent on a single event or setback but on your ability to learn and improve over time. This is especially difficult for perfectionists. Seeking out those moments of progress, regardless of the outcome, helps shift the focus from perfection to growth. It’s about accepting that mistakes are part of the process.

Action Steps to Help You Confront Failure

A fear of failure doesn’t simply disappear– it requires an intentional decision to make a change. We have some tips below that can help you create your plan to move beyond a fear of failure.

1. Start Small and Build Confidence

Fear fades with action. Take manageable risks to train yourself to face challenges and handle failure. Commit to taking small steps forward, even if you’re scared, and gradually increase the stakes to build resilience and confidence. For example, if you’re afraid of public speaking, start by practicing in front of a mirror, then progress to speaking in front of a friend, and eventually challenge yourself with larger audiences.

2. Set Process-Oriented Goals

Instead of focusing solely on results, create goals based on effort, learning, and improvement. Track your growth and development; consider the journey, not just the destination. This takes the pressure off of achieving a perfect outcome and cultivates intrinsic motivation instead of relying on external rewards.

3. Try “Pre-Mortem” Thinking

Before starting a project, identify potential obstacles and plan out solutions. Considering for setbacks ahead of time puts you in control of the situation. There are a number of exercises that you can use, including:

• Fear-Setting is a structured exercise with worksheets that allows you to identify your fears in detail while weighing the benefits of taking action against the risks of inaction.
• Worst Case Scenario prepares you to feel the emotions of the worst possible outcome of a situation while thinking of ways to respond so that you can get past the initial emotional response and are prepared for whatever actually happens.
• Decatastrophizing is a concept in cognitive therapy that focuses on recognizing repetitive negative thoughts and overriding faulty thought patterns. While catastrophizing, or overestimating the likelihood of failure, can be damaging, decatastrophizing can provide emotional regulation and reduce anxiety.

4. Keep a “Failure Journal

Instead of dwelling on failure, analyze it. Document your failures and what you learned from them. What went wrong? What can be improved? What did you do well? This approach turns failure into a powerful teacher. Over time, you’ll see patterns of growth and resilience.

5. Do Things You’re Bad At

Step outside your comfort zone. Deliberately engaging in activities where you might fail, such as learning a new language or trying to knit, builds resistance, rewiring your brain to tolerate failure better. The more you face failure, the less power it has over you. Regular exposure to challenging situations helps desensitize you to fear.

6. Manage Anxiety Through Mindfulness

Mindfulness, or being present in the current moment and observing your thoughts and feelings without judgment, has numerous benefits, from reducing emotional reactivity to increasing cognitive flexibility and changing neural pathways, referring back to the topic of mindset shifting. Mindfulness exercises like meditation, deep breathing, and grounding exercises help regulate emotions and decrease fear responses.

7. Seek Out Growth-Oriented People and Constructive Feedback

While overcoming a fear of failure is a personal endeavor, your environment influences your mindset. Try to surround yourself with individuals who embrace challenges and encourage resilience. When seeking input from others, learn to separate personal feelings from helpful advice. Feedback is a gift. View it as tool for growth, not a personal attack.

While it may not feel that way sometimes, overcoming a fear of failure is in your control. By shifting your mindset, practicing self-compassion, and creating an action plan, you can move beyond your fear, and fail, or maybe even succeed, while facing your challenges head on. The most successful people are those who learn, adapt, and persist despite setbacks, rather than those who never fail. And whether you’re fearing criticism from yourself or others, remember this quote from Brené Brown: “If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

When was a time that you had to overcome a fear of failure? Did you succeed or learn a lesson (or both)? Leave a comment below, send us an email, or follow us on LinkedIn.