How to Conquer the Fear of Failure?

When we have to start a new venture, we often feel fear of failure. Before exams, we feel fear of low marks or may be failure!

At times when we have to decide between two or more choices, we feel afraid. Fear of failure is natural and overcoming this fear is natural too!. People feel the fear of failure at different stages in life but there is a good news.

Good news: We all can overcome the fear of failure. The question: How can we overcome this fear of failure?

We can learn from those people who successfully overcame the fear of failure and have shared their experiences with us. One of the person who has shared the technique of overcoming failure is an Olympic athlete Guy Drut.

I would like to narrate a story from Mark Mc Cormack international best seller: What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School which guides us on one of the most important tools to overcome the fear of failure.

This is true story of a French Olympic player Guy Drut. In summer of 1976, he was the only hope of France for win in Olympic track-and-field medal.

Naturally, he was afraid. He had the burden of carrying nation’s pride on his shoulders. One of his friends Jean Claude Killy advised him how to overcome the fear of failure.

Killy’s advice was very simply.

Killy advised Drut to repeat a few words in his mind over and over again. Killy told Drut that he was the only one who can use his body and mind for peak performance. He should keep on saying to himself:

“I have done every thing to get ready for this race and if I win, every thing will be great. But even if I don’t win, my friends will still be my friends, my enemies will still be my enemies and the world will still be the same”

Drut says that he took Killy’s advice to his heart. He repeated this sentence in all his practice exercises, during breaks and in between the semi-finals and finals. He kept saying the sentences to himself over and over and it blocked out every thing else. Drut says: I kept on repeating it to such an extent that I was still repeating it when I went up to receive the gold medal!

We all can get benefit of this advice. Our self-talk reflects our expectancy from our lives. Positive self talk is more than a positive mental attitude. It is an evidence of determination in our future.