Brian Tracy argues fear of failure, not failure itself, stops adults from succeeding. He prescribes a concrete exercise: write your biggest fear, then answer how it holds you back, how it has helped you, and what you gain by eliminating it. Courage comes after action, not before.
Fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. But here's the kicker. It's not failure that holds you back. It's the fear of failure. It's the anticipation of failure. Because if you look at your life, you realize that you failed hundreds of times. More times than you can count. Everyone has experienced failure from time to time, but resolving to be too careful can hold you back and sabotage your efforts to achieve your goals. So here's a Are you letting the fear of failure scare you into being overly cautious? Well, don't do it. Instead, overcome your fear of failure by taking the time to identify, define, and analyze your fears. At the top of a clean sheet of paper, write the question what am I afraid of? Then make a list of your fears and select the one that you feel holds you back the most. When, with your biggest fear in mind, write the answers to these three 1. How does this fear hold me back in life? 2. How does it help me? Or how has it helped me in the past? And this is the key. 3. What would be your payoff for eliminating this fear altogether? When you can identify the fears that hold you back instead of backing away from them, move toward them. Instead of avoiding them, confront them. Eventually, you reach the point where those fears no longer play a major role in your decision making. And the wonderful thing is, if you do the thing you fear, the courage comes afterwards. Then you can set big, challenging, exciting goals and be confident that you can attain them. You can become unstoppable.
