10 steps to overcome fear of failure

The prospect of failure can feel scary. Whether a project goes awry after you’ve spent countless hours on it or you pursued a dream job only to be rejected after the final interview stage, failure is discouraging. However, you shouldn’t let it stop you from achieving your goals. With practice and commitment, you can learn how to overcome a fear of failure. 

It’s normal to fear failure. Everyone wants to succeed in their career, relationships, and personal endeavors, but mistakes, setbacks, and hurdles are a reality of life. If you maintain a positive mindset, failure means an opportunity to grow.

The first step in this personal development journey is identifying the signs that you’re afraid of failing. From there, you can take steps to conquer your fear of failure.

Signs you have a fear of failure

Fear of failing, clinically known as atychiphobia, is a type of anxiety disorder that can manifest through thought patterns and subconscious behaviors, such as self-sabotage or procrastination. 

The following signs indicate that you could be dealing with a fear of failure:

• Reluctance to try new things: If you’re scared to fail, you might feel that challenging projects or other endeavors aren’t worth it.
• Self-sabotage: If you feel unqualified for an opportunity, you might find ways to sabotage your personal and professional growth. 
• Negative thoughts: When confronted with a challenge, you may engage in negative self-talk.
• Intense anxiety: You may experience ruminating thoughts, catastrophizing, and physical symptoms like sweating, rapid heartbeat, and nausea.
• Fear of disappointing others: It can be easy to connect failure with disappointing others, and if you strive to impress others, letting others down can feel like failure.
• Indifference toward your career and goals: If you lack confidence in your abilities, a fear of failing can cause you to avoid setting ambitious career goals. 
• Avoidance of unfamiliar environments, projects, and people: You may gravitate toward settings that are familiar to you so you feel more capable of navigating them successfully.

Fear of failure can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have a fixed mindset on the inevitability of failure, it becomes the more likely outcome. Automatic negative thoughts can take over, harming your confidence and increasing self-doubt. Then, if you do fall short, it feels like validation that your fear was correct.

For example, picture yourself heading to a job interview for a role you don’t feel qualified to take on. You don’t prepare for the conversation because you believe there is no chance you’ll move forward in the hiring process. This behavior is a form of self-sabotage. 

You might then try to validate your choice by convincing yourself you didn’t deserve to succeed or couldn’t succeed in the first place. If the lack of preparation results in denial of a second interview, it reinforces the limiting belief that you’re unqualified. This cycle can play out in all areas of your life. 

Research published in the Pakistan Journal of Educational Research in 2022 found that atychiphobia in students prevented them from completing standard tasks. It had a harmful impact on these students’ mental health.

The key to breaking the pattern is recognizing your behaviors. For some, the anxiety created by a fear of failure becomes so familiar that maintaining it feels safer than working through the underlying cause. It might take time to recognize the signs of fearing failure in yourself. The symptoms can be interwoven with shame, depression, anxiety, or low self-esteem, which makes identifying a fear of failure as the root cause harder to spot.

Self-awareness and patience are crucial, but it’s also critical to be compassionate with yourself. As with learning any new skill, it takes time. However, when you learn how to work with a fear of failure, you open the door to greater life and career satisfaction. You’ll feel more confident and better equipped to work toward achieving life goals, and you’ll ultimately experience greater life fulfillment. 

10 steps to overcome fear of failure

After identifying how a fear of failure manifests for you, the next step is to work through it. Here are some tips that can help.

Accept that failure is normal 

Even the most successful people have experienced failure. The ability to overcome obstacles and accept mistakes is a key part of achieving success. By learning from your mistakes, you’re a step closer to reaching your goals. If you fail, remind yourself that it’s normal. Take time to pause and reflect on why the failure occurred and how you can avoid it in the future. 

Adopt a beginner’s mindset

Adopting a beginner’s mindset means approaching new challenges with curiosity and positive thinking rather than fear. Look at every situation as an opportunity to learn from failure. You must also practice before becoming proficient in any skill. If you’re a perfectionist, it’s likely you want to succeed in your first attempt, but this is an unrealistic expectation. You’ll encounter roadblocks, and that’s OK. Two small steps forward and one step back is still a net positive.

Talk to someone you trust

If you’re feeling stuck, overthinking and overwhelm can kick in. Talking to someone you trust, such as a friend, mentor, family member, or therapist, can help shed new light on your situation. Tell them about your fears, and listen to their feedback. An outsider’s perspective on your challenges can change how you see things. They may remind you what you’re capable of and give you reasons to trust yourself. A different point of view can also help you think creatively about the problem.

Think of alternatives

When you’re worried about a situation, it’s easy to fixate on potential negative outcomes. However, you never really know what will happen until you do it. Counter negative ruminating thoughts with the possibility that your efforts can produce results better than expected. Visualize a situation in which you succeed. For example, taking on a big project might lead to new industry connections, deepen a relationship with your boss and team, or help you gain more knowledge about your career field. 

Remember the cost of not trying

Making decisions based on a fear of failure can come at a cost. You could miss out on some of life’s great opportunities if you never try anything unfamiliar. Remember that trying and failing is often better than not trying at all. A failure that you learn from often feels better in the long run than dealing with the regret of not trying.

Maintain a flexible mindset

If you approach an opportunity to learn new skills with a fixed mindset, you might be quick to give up if you encounter a roadblock. Yet, a flexible or growth mindset allows you greater freedom to consider other options or ways you could change course to achieve the desired outcome. For example, you can quit a job you don’t like, ask for help when overwhelmed, or extend your deadline if needed. As long as you’re willing to adapt, you’re never truly stuck in a decision.

Be afraid, but do it anyway

Your fear of failure may never really go away, and that’s OK. That doesn’t mean you have to let it control your choices. If being brave means progressing without fear, courage means doing it despite fear. Be courageous — you’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish.

Work on taking risks

A fear of failure can make you risk averse. Every risk you take may feel like the potential for failure is too big to pursue it. However, you can start slow by taking small, healthy risks. Break down a large goal into smaller ones that feel more manageable. With practice, you’ll grow more comfortable taking a reasonable risk. 

Get comfortable with rejection

Every time you put yourself out there, you might fear rejection. Remember, this is a normal experience, but rejection doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. If you approach it with a growth mindset, every rejection becomes an opportunity to learn — even an error moves you closer to your end goal. 

Try new things often

If you attempt new things or visit new places often, you can grow more comfortable with being uncomfortable. You’ll learn something new and gain practice. The discomfort is unpleasant but can also be a sign that you’re expanding your horizons. 

Conquering fear of failure at work

A failure at work can feel particularly scary. Here are some tips to help you conquer fear in the workplace.

Identify the benefits of past failures

Many negative experiences have hidden benefits, even if you don’t see them instantly. Take a look at previous mistakes and how they influenced you. Perhaps an embarrassing typo made you more detail-oriented, or a missed deadline made you more efficient. These experiences might have hurt, but you had grit and persevered. 

Pro tip: While you think back on the benefits of past failures, dedicate time to remembering past successes as well. By brainstorming when you’ve performed well, you might boost confidence in your abilities. 

View it as a challenge

When there’s a higher risk of failure than usual, see it as a challenge. It’s an opportunity to test your skills in a way you haven’t before. Stepping out of your comfort zone is hard work and might be stressful at first, but not all stress is bad. If you’re up to the task, you just might achieve some of the best work you ever have.

Be kind to yourself

Remember to be kind to yourself if things don’t go your way. Self-care practices are always important, but they’re especially necessary when you don’t meet your expectations. Go home, take a bath, or hit the gym. Do whatever you need to relieve stress before making another attempt at your goal.

What causes fear of failure?

The reasons for a fear of failure can range from unpleasant past experiences to high expectations that you impose on yourself. There might be more than one cause, so take a look at some of the most common sources of fear of failure to determine which resonates most with you. 

Perfectionism

If you deal with perfectionism, you might fear failure so much that it makes you unable to start a task. You might worry that people will judge or critique you. Additionally, you might need to prove your value through your contributions to the workplace. If something isn’t perfect, you likely view it as a failure. However, this perspective risks setting an impossibly high standard of perfectionism that you won’t be able to meet. 

Negative past experiences

If you had early childhood experiences where failure was considered unacceptable, you might have developed a fear of failure. It’s possible you learned that mistakes, errors, and failures weren’t opportunities to learn but were condemned as wrong and that you needed to go above and beyond.

External pressures

You might feel overwhelmed by the standards set by others and fear that you may fail to meet those expectations. As a result, you might not work toward promotions or challenging projects. You likely experience anxiety around disappointing others, being rejected, or being judged. 

Low self-esteem

Low self-esteem can create a need to prove your worth. You might be prone to seeking external validation and, therefore, avoid putting yourself in situations where you might make a mistake. It’s likely you won’t do something that risks someone viewing you negatively. Additionally, you might feel guilty when you make a mistake or fail. 

Observational learned behavior

Growing up with primary caregivers who handled failure poorly might have demonstrated that failure was unacceptable. With observational learned behavior, you didn’t fear failure via direct adverse experience. Instead, you witnessed someone else struggling to handle it.

Fear of success

A fear of success and failure can go hand in hand. You might be afraid of succeeding because of the possibility of increased workload, visibility, and expectations. A fear of failure results from feeling incapable of handling the boost in responsibilities. 

Overcome fear of failure with these 4 questions

Next time you feel afraid, take a deep breath and write your thoughts in a journal. You can use these questions to prompt a different way of thinking:

1. What am I really afraid of? Writing down your fears can make them feel less overwhelming. You can better identify if you’re afraid of rejection, critique, or being perceived as unworthy. 
2. Who am I fighting for? Sometimes your fear stops you from helping people you care about. Reminding yourself of this can give you the push you need.
3. What’s the best thing that could happen? Instead of ruminating on the worst possible outcome, reframe your thinking to focus on success. Imagine yourself accomplishing your goals.
4. How will I recover if I fail? Because failure is a reality, it’s important to keep the possibility in mind without letting it overwhelm your thoughts. Brainstorm how you’ll continue to support yourself and your goals even if you fail. 

Reading your answers can help you identify your fears, thought patterns, and limiting beliefs you weren’t aware of before. It can also make you feel less overwhelmed, allowing you to examine your concerns objectively and plan a course of action.

Learn how to overcome fear of failure to achieve your goals

Having a fear of failure is normal. It’s also normal to make mistakes. However, the difference is how you handle the emotions connected to failure when you do err. If you view every mistake or error as an opportunity to learn something new about yourself or acquire a new skill, failure means personal and professional growth. 

As you grow more comfortable with healthy risks and challenges, the guidance of a professional career coach can help. Not only can they assist you in working through complex emotions connected to failure, but they can also provide useful tips to navigate mistakes. BetterUp Coaches are on your team as you strive to overcome a fear of failure.