How can you avoid failure in all situations? Change your perception of the situation & the impact of the situation at that time. Fear of failure and lack of confidence because of past failures are topics that come up for coaching clients again & again. This fear of failure or lack of confidence hold people back from what they want to do or can make people feel very stressed before doing something – for e.g. before starting a new project; or when you’ve been promoted at work; or you’ve been asked to speak at a conference & that feels overwhelming for you.
How can you avoid failure in all situations? Change your perception of the situation & the impact of the situation at that time. Click To Tweet
We all have our own reasons for why we feel like this. In these situations really understand where your reasons are coming from. What is it that you’re telling yourself when you are going through this situation that feels like failure?
In order to avoid failure in all situations you can change your perception of what’s happening at the time. You can do this by asking yourself these three questions:
- Have I given this my best?: Am I doing my very best in this situation? Have I given it all that I can? Have I prepared enough? Have I allocated enough resources? Have I considered all the different aspects of what’s required in this situation? What is within my control to make sure that I am giving my very best in this situation?
- What have I learned from this situation?: If things don’t go well – don’t consider it a failure / that it wasn’t good enough. Ask yourself what you can learn from this situation? Where could you have done better? If you don’t have all the answer – who else could help you figure out the answers (sometimes someone with more/different experience)?
- How do I implement what I learned in future situations: From what I know I could have done better – how can I implement what I have learned in future situations? How can I make it as easy as possible to do this even better the next time?
It is what we are telling ourselves that makes us feel a certain way about the situation. Yes -you can be in a situation with all the negative impacts; yes in those situations it doesn’t feel good at that time. It is about recognising that this is the situation I am currently in – recognising the positives & the negatives. Then ask yourself what is within my control to change about the situation? What can I learn from this? How can I take what happened here & prevent it from happening again in the future so that this situation can turn out to be a positive in the long run.
Changing your perception at times like this can be hard. It can be hard to take that stance when you’re in the moment. You can take a pen & a piece of paper & write down all the things – both positive & negative about the situation. In this look at what you can learn & how you can focus more on the positive things in the moment.
If you are looking back over past situations & you see them as a failure, look at what you thought you were failing at and ask yourself how you could change your perception of that situation.
