Truman Capote once said, "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor." That couldn't be any more accurate. Whatever you do in life, no matter how big or small, there's the opportunity to fail with every success and the opportunity to succeed with every failure.
Everyone wants to be a success in their own way, but the fear of failure is often a limitation stopping many from achieving their full greatness. Failure can be outright devastating, so we attempt to avoid it at all costs. No one wants to fail, yet everyone fails sometimes. There is an opportunity to take hold of this fear and outweigh failures in life with your successes.
Fear is forever a part of our DNA, but learning how to take control of this emotion and make it work for you can be all the difference.
Six ways to battle your fears and fuel your success:
1. Step out of your comfort zone once a week, whether at the office, in your social life or in your community.
2. Sit back and think about what is at the root of your fear, since it's often something deeper than what's on the surface. Identifying your actual fear is a step closer to understanding how to deal with it.
3. When your fear becomes a stress, then it is time to step back and relax. Go on a walk, take a vacation, open a book and remove yourself from your everyday life to help refresh yourself.
4. Get help from your support system by talking about and exploring your fear. This support system can be family, friends, community members, a co-worker or a therapist.
5. Take comfort in your abilities, past success and your strengths because they'll always outweigh your fear of failure. It all depends on a positive outlook.
6. Look at fear as an opportunity for greatness, using it to identify your problems and better understand how they can be solved.
Taking risks is a sign of the confidence that's required to reach your own definition of success. Confidence is in everyone at different levels, and will present itself in ways unique to each individual. It just needs to be ignited.
Confidence is crucial to success because helps bolster your skills, values and talents to their highest levels, no matter the task. A person interviewing for a job with fewer qualifications, but who is confident, will almost always beat out the person interviewing for the same role with better qualifications and low confidence in his or her abilities.
Confidence is an indication that you know what you're doing and that you have faith in your own skill set to complete your goals.
Six ways to bolster your confidence and guarantee success:
1. Surround yourself with positive, driven people who are happy with themselves and are willing to change the things in their lives that don't make them a success. Confidence is contagious.
2. Take a bold risk every so often to change your circumstances for the better. If it is a successful pivot, your confidence will rise. If it isn't successful, bounce back quickly.
3. Do one thing every day that makes you smile. Happiness is synonymous with confidence, or at least it should be.
4. Focus on goals and aspirations to uphold your confidence for the long term. Enjoy your life, but don't neglect your a steadfast outlook on where you are going and what it'll take to get there.
5. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is how quickly they bounce back from a failure. That's one of my favorite Barbara Corcoran quotes, because it clearly illustrates how "faking it until you make it" can help you gain the confidence to overcome your failures. If you are down on yourself, there's no time to push forward except for right away.
6. Move quickly when it comes to achieving your goals. Time is of the essence, always. The more quickly you begin working toward your goals for success, the stronger your confidence will grow.
What is your approach to success? Is it two parts confidence, one part fear? Define your own recipe, and share your thoughts in the comments below.
A version of this blog appeared on Medium.
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