Fear Of Failure Stopping You? Just Do It Anyway.

This article is dedicated to entrepreneurs and life coaches who are starting to build their businesses, and women who are losing weight, who are failing because of their fear of failure!

Fear is a tricky emotion.

There’s intuitive fear, that tells us we’re in danger and need to escape or change direction.
We must get to know this fear, and pay attention to it.
It’s usually quite prickly, and wordless.
It’s pretty rare, though, as most of us reading this blog are lucky to live in a safe and glorious world.

Then, there’s the fear that we create with our minds.
This fear is noisy.
It tells us not to take action, not to evolve, to stay small, unseen.
It tells us that it isn't safe to move forward, to put your magic out into the world.
People will judge.
Your friends will abandon you if you’re successful. If you fail. If you share your story. If you’re too much of you.

The main reason that the coaches I work with don’t move forward with their businesses
is that they haven’t learnt how to tell the difference between intuitive fear and fear of failure.
They think that fear is an indication of danger, and so they stop.
They are paralyzing themselves with their minds.

Our brains don’t like change.
Our primitive brains constantly scan for danger, and anything that is out of the ordinary smells like danger to them.
They just don’t understand it and so it’s scary.

But us humans - we also have highly evolved executive brains.
And those parts of us yearn for growth, progress, self-actualization.
Coaches respond to this yearning by developing practices where we can be of service. Help you end your suffering.

It’s our evolved brain that guides us to start businesses that serve our community and the world.
And its our evolved brain that can calm us when we feel scared because of our thinking.
Our evolved brain just needs to understand that, when we feel fear of failure or doubt, it means that we are doing work that matters*.
To our clients.
To our soul.
To our world.

Think back on your deepest dream, your highest goal, that you haven’t yet acheived.

I ask you: What if, when you feel fear about this, you do it anyway?

What would you do that you have not done?

What would you say that you have not said?

What would you publish that you have not published?

What would you achieve that you have not achieved?

All those answers - go do them.

Today.

Now.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

That noisy fear - it’s your sign that you’re doing work that matters*.

So, how does this relate to weight loss?
Have you ever lost weight, and then as soon as you hit your goal weight, you gained it all back?
My hunch is that that same noisy fear may have been driving your overeating.
People will judge.
Men may pay attention to me.
My friends will abandon me if I’m too thin. If you show off.  If I’m thinner than them. If I’m too much of me.

Yes? Maybe? A bit familiar.

The truth is, you may not have even been aware of these thoughts as you binged your way back to your original weight.
But I assure you they were there.

Please don’t worry.
There is hope.
And it’s simple.

As soon as I tell my clients that their fear of failure, or Resistance, as Stephen Pressfield calls it, is a natural force that will always surface when they are stretching, they feel calmer and ready to move forward.

They just need to understand that this noisy fear is not their intuitive, guided fear.

They engage their evolved higher brain, and they are off to the races.

With weight loss, it’s a little more complicated, because we often house our wounds and traumas in our bodies, and as we shed our weight, our vulnerabilities surface. For this, I recommend the support of a Certified Weight Loss coach, who will meet your wounds with compassion, and teach you how to engage with your fears in a safe and supportive way. I have two spots available for private coaching in September, and if you are ready to get to know your fears and move forward anyway, either with your business or your weight loss, then we should talk. Schedule your complimentary consultation today.

*Thank you to John Acuff for teaching me this in his book Start. It has changed my entire response to fear - now I seek it out, because now I know that if I’m not feeling fear or doubt, I’m just existing, and I want to always be striving to be better, more, and to serve in a higher way.