When you make a mistake, never be afraid to admit it, claim it, and grow from it. “Mistakes,” as one of Klemmer’s recent inspirational social media posts said, “are signs of life.”
Why a fear failure?
A fear of mistakes and failure is engrained deep inside our psychology as human beings. It’s a biological mechanism that kept our remote ancestors safe from predators and other dangers. But for us today, a fear of failure is often irrational, keeping us tied to unproductive habits of thinking and behaving better left in the past.
Owning your mistakes doesn’t require you to be owned by them or to carry a load of eternal guilt. Klemmer founder Brian Klemmer himself pointed out that it’s often easier for us as human beings to immerse ourselves in feeling guilty because the alternative is to take a clear-eyed look at ourselves and opt for the harder path of choosing growth and change.
Embrace your mistakes
It’s not your mistakes that will define you, it’s what you make of them. If you try to cover them up, chances are they will eventually come to light regardless of your efforts. So don’t think of mistakes as millstones to carry around your neck, but as hinges that can open doors to positive change. A leader reveals themselves in moments like these. How you respond to making a mistake shows your character. If you take ownership of it, you earn people’s respect. If you can use it to create longer-lasting value, you earn people’s trust.
Many successful people were told early on in their careers that they wouldn’t amount to anything. Yet they persevered, often through periods of extreme uncertainty, questioning, and self-doubt. They continually scanned the territory around their mistakes, discovering why they acted in the way they did and what it cost them—as well as what they gained, and what they could have gained had they chosen a different strategy.
Mistakes, viewed in this light, are not millstones, but milestones on the way to ultimate success. Every time you make a less-than-optimal choice or have to confront an unexpected obstacle, you learn something that will help you improve the quality of your decision-making down the road.
A fear of mistakes is a fear of shame
For some people, a fear of mistakes and failure is transitory and bound up with a particular situation. For others, it’s a pervasive and long-term habit of being. For some, a long-standing fear of failure is associated with clinical depression, and may be helped by therapy with a qualified professional.
If you experience long-lasting feelings of helplessness, loss of control, and anxiety, or if you are consistently indecisive or avoidant, these could be signs you’re overwhelmed by a fear of failure. These emotions can be accompanied by physical symptoms such as a racing heart rate, lightheadedness, or digestive system problems.
Experts have noted that a fear of failure is, at its core, a fear of feeling shame. When people become so determined to avoid even the possibility that they could end up feeling shamed, they can become mentally and emotionally frozen, stuck in the same place for years.
Rest assured, this place of imagined safety is anything but. Once you’ve invested this much into staying put, you actually start losing ground to others with more belief in themselves, others who care much less about what other people think, or who are more comfortable with the unknown. And that results in you accumulating even more anxiety in a never-ending cycle of feeling helpless and ineffective.
Break the cycle
Here are a few practical new habits you can establish:
- Instead of uselessly worrying about the forces outside of your control, concentrate on the things you can change.
- Focus on developing several alternate courses of action in case your immediate plan hits a setback.
- Work on getting better at the type of positive “self-talk” that keeps you motivated during a project while still honestly viewing your mistakes.
Now the bigger picture:
The choice to move forward with courage in the face of fear was integral to the moral code of the renowned samurai warriors. In this worldview, loyalty to others and to one’s own higher purpose demands decisiveness and forward motion toward a goal. Choosing comfort and stasis is thus a dereliction of duty: the duty to participate in making the world a better place, and the duty to make one’s self a better person.
The Heart of the Samurai – an antidote to fear
Klemmer’s leadership coaching and personal growth courses are designed specifically to help you develop the kind of courage it takes to push forward to achieve lasting changes in your personality, behavior, and outlook.
Based on Brian Klemmer’s decades of work as an entrepreneur, author, leadership coach, and motivational speaker, the Klemmer program includes the transformational Heart of the Samurai workshop. This intensive training calls on participants to look within, wrestle with the choices—or “mistakes”—that led them to where they are, and start building a new life based on accountability, commitment, and a blend of compassion and strength.
Fear of mistakes can keep us stuck in a holding pattern for years. Every day, every one of us has to decide whether we are more committed to our goals of growth, honor, and leadership, or to just waiting around to see what will happen to us. Which way will you choose?