How To Get Over The Fear Of Failure | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you happen to love this podcast, please do me a huge favor. Go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts or however you listen to us and give us a rating and review. The more positive rating reviews that we get on those platforms, the more that those platforms actually show this podcast to people who have never heard of it before. And that way we can grow and more people's lives can be impacted. So if you would do that for me, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today we're going to be talking about how to get past the fear of failure. Let me say this before we dive into specifically the fear of failure. I believe, and this is my own personal belief, that fear is the absolute worst thing in the world. And we can think back to the phrase, the famous quote, the only thing to fear is fear itself. I believe that fear is the worst thing in the world. And let me explain to you why I think that is number one. It. It stops people from chasing their dreams. There's so many dreams that lie dormant inside of the cemetery because people just didn't follow them because they're afraid of something. So it stops people from chasing their dreams. It stops people from having the life that they truly want, this one life that they get. It stops people from starting a business. It stops people from asking that person out. It stops people from pursuing their dreams. Fear is also the root of hate, because you fear what you do not know. We all fear what we do not know. And if you knew and understood the other person, their past, what they've been through, you can never hate that person. Which means that fear is the root of war. You know, one country fears another country is going to attack them, and so what do they do? They attack first so that they don't get attacked. Because I don't want you to attack me. And so it's like, I'll go to war with you because I'm afraid of you attacking me. So I'm going to attack you first because I'm afraid of death. And so I believe that fear is the worst thing in the world, and it holds people back from everything that they truly want. And so when we go into the fear of failure, I mean, the amount of messages that I get of people that don't follow their dreams or haven't done what they truly want to do because they're afraid of Being judged or afraid of what their mom's going to say, they're afraid of failing. They're afraid of what would happen if their business went under. All of these things. So they just don't chase what they truly want to do. And what's interesting about the fear of failure is that it actually has nothing to do with failure. That's the interesting thing, and that's what we're going to dive into deeper today, is a fear of failure has nothing to do with failure. It's the fear of your insecurities coming to light. Mine too. I have the fear of failure that pops up all the time, too. I think that every single successful person has the fear of failure in some sort of way whenever they go and they start something new. But just some people listen to the fear and do nothing. And some people don't listen to the fear and create the life that they want. But it's the fear, not the fear of failure. The fear of failure is actually fear of my insecurities coming to light. At the center of everybody's fears is I'm not good enough. And if I'm not good enough, then I won't be loved. At the center of every single person's fear is that I'm not good enough and that if I'm not good enough, I won't be loved. If you think of your biggest fear, all of the fears of, you know, like, I always hear like, I'm going to run out of money or I'm not going to be able to be a great parent or whatever it might be, my business is going to fail. I'm going to screw up my relationship, all of those, because you feel like you're not enough to actually succeed in those. And if I fail at those things, I will be shown my greatest fear, which is I'm not good enough. This business failed comes to the surface, my biggest insecurity. See, I'm not good enough to run a business. I should have just got a day job. I should have just stuck with a rat race. And so what happens is instead of actually going out and facing their fears and possibly coming in contact with their insecurities, people go through life and, you know, I'd rather live a life of mediocrity so I don't have to see the places where I'm not good enough. And I fear being judged. So I won't start because I don't want to be judged. And if I do fail, on top of that, I'll be judged even harder. And so we're not consciously thinking these. When we have the fear arising inside of us. These are all subconscious thoughts, is, what if I do it and I fail? What if I do it and I. And I'm judged? And what if I do it and I fail? And then I'm judged even harder. And then my insecurity, my greatest insecurity of I'm not enough comes into play. And if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. Because at the center of everything, every single human, no matter who they are, is just somebody who wants to be loved, somebody who wants to be accepted, somebody who wants to be heard. Failure, the thing that we think is failure in our mind is just a function. It's falling. We screwed up. Get back up. Mess up, I learn more. You learn more when you mess up than when you do something right. Right. I didn't just wake up and my business was doing well. No, there was a lot that had to go into it. And I probably succeed with my ideas, like, 5% of the time in my company. The rest of the time, I feel like I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and we're just going to see what sticks. And it was the same way with the podcast. Like, with my podcast. This one, Well, I like somewhere, whatever it is, or over 1300 episodes, 1400 episodes. We had a lot of episodes. Right. And I remember when I first started, I remember seeing a statistic that the average podcaster. And this is way back in 2015. So there weren't many podcasters back then, but way back in 2015, that the average podcaster gives up after seven episodes. So I just made a decision. If I'm going to start a podcast, I'm not going to stop. Why? Because everybody else along the way is eventually going to give up. And if I just don't give up, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out my flow. I'll see what works, what doesn't work, and eventually I'll be towards the top. That was just my thought. Luckily, it worked. You know, this is now the number one. Always between number one and number three, business and mental health podcasts in the world. To one of the top 100 podcasts in the entire world out of every podcast. And there's like, 1.7 million of them. And people always say, like, what's. What's the secret to success in podcasts? Tell me the secret. Like, how can I get to where you are in six months? I'm like, it's been years, years and years and years. And years and years and years. You know, we're going to be eventually, pretty soon, approaching 10 years running this podcast. I just didn't stop. I had bad reviews, I had crappy comments, I had emails saying that I know what the fuck I was talking about, but I just kept going. That's what you have to do with whatever it is that you want in your life. You just have to keep going. Like, think back to something that you gave up on. Think of something that you really wanted, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago that you gave up on. Think about that thing. Do you have it in your mind now? Think about where you could be if you just did not give up. Think about where that business could be. Think about where your health could be. Think about where that relationship could be. Think of that thing that you gave up on years ago. And if you didn't give up, where could you be right now? You would have a vastly different life, I'm sure. Now think about the thing that's in front of you that you're afraid to start because you're afraid of failing. Or think about the thing in front of you that you're currently doing, but you're really afraid of. Of going all out because you're afraid of failing. If you fast forward five years now, where could you be if you decided not to give up again because you've given up on yourself many times out of the fear of failure. Where could you be if you didn't give up on yourself? You have to what I have what I like to call failure amnesia. You have to completely forget about the times where you've quote, unquote, failed and only think about successes, even if it's just one success. Just think about that one success all the time. Because if I look at, like, personally for me, what pops into my head? So, yeah, I have a successful business now, but I've had multiple businesses that were not successful that I screwed up on, that I ran into the ground, that I lost all of my money, that I went negative in my accounts. I've had multiple of them. And if I would have taken that past event and place it into the future and not started because of what happened in the past, then I wouldn't have the business that I have now. You have to have failure amnesia. You have to think about the future more than you think about the past. Never walk. Like, when you think about who you are and what you learned, you never walk through the same river twice because you're not the same person and it's not the same river, we're constantly changing. Life is constantly changing. And to think that what happened to you in the past is automatically going to be what happened to you and what will happen to you in the future is crazy, because with my failed businesses as an example, I learned how to not fail businesses because I failed businesses. So that's. The important thing is that the past is not supposed to be placed into the future of. Oh, this was the end result of this thing before. Like, if you're in a relationship right now and you have. You're afraid to get it, or maybe you're afraid to get into a relationship because you've had some negative relationships in the past, and you're looking at your negative relationships in the past and you're throwing them into your future and saying, well, yeah, I probably shouldn't get into a relationship because my relationships in the past were like this. This is what my relationship with the future is probably gonna be like. No, because you're not the same person. You learned what you want, what you don't want, how you don't want that person to show up, how you don't want to show up. You've learned from that. Same way that if you're the exact same thing is true in the relationship, as if starting a business. Have you had failed businesses in the past, or do you know people who have failed in the past? Sure, maybe. But you learn from all of these things. You learn from every single experience that you have in your life. The fear will never actually go away. I don't know if the fear will ever go away. Successful people are not fearless. They feel the fear, but then they just decide to do it anyways. You have to do the same. When you look at someone who you look up to that's very successful, maybe it's your uncle, or maybe it's someone your grandfather, or maybe it's a friend of a friend or whatever it is. They're somebody who probably has the same amount of fears than you. The same amount, but they just decide to do it anyways. Here is what I'm positive of, though. That person that you see that is ridiculously successful has had way more failures than you. The people who are the most successful are the biggest failures. When you look at people like Michael Jordan, he was cut from his high school basketball team. When you look at people like J.K. rowling, she had 12 publishers tell her that her book sucked, and then she finally got one to pick it up. She put out Harry Potter, and all the Harry Potter series have sold more than 500 million copies. Imagine if she had given up after the 11th publisher. You have to understand that everybody feels the fear of failure. But what you're really feeling is just a feeling of the insecurity of what happens if I do this and it doesn't work out and people judge me and I judge myself and I show and I am shown that I am not good enough. I don't know about you. I'm more afraid of dying and not seeing my true potential than I am of quote, unquote, failure. I expect failure. I think you should welcome failure. Feel the fear and do it anyways. You're gonna feel the fear, and when you're sitting there, you're about to go do something new, the fear will arise. You know that feeling inside of your body? The physical feeling of like, oh, yeah, I'm. I'm definitely feeling fear right now. Okay, breathe into it and then dance with the fear. Go and do it anyways. It's no big deal. It's not gonna disappear. It might get a little bit quieter over time. But you're not gonna die with no fears. You're gonna. You're just going to hopefully eventually learn to start working with your fears. So instead of it paralyzing you, it needs to propel you in some sort of way. Here's the issue, though. You need to train yourself this way. You've been trained to be afraid of failure. Now you need to start training yourself to be okay with failure, okay with fear. Same way that Pavlov's dogs, they were trained, that when you ding a bell, you get a treat. When you ding a bell, you get a treat. And so they eventually just ding the bell and their body started. Their mouth started salivating, their body took over before their brain did. What if you could start retraining your brain exactly the same to welcome the fear to go. Yep, there it is. I feel it. Let's go. So instead of it holding you back and paralyzing you, it actually starts to repel you. Expect the fear. Do it anyways. Dance with the fear. And remember this, you only have to succeed once. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R Also, if you love this podcast, you want some extra stuff inside of your Instagram feed. The Mindset Mentor podcast on Instagram. That is the handle. And I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.