Your Fear of Failure - how to overcome it!

This is one of the most important things you will read

by Kimberly Giles

The most powerful thing you can do to improve your relationships is to work on managing your fear of failure and improve your sense of self-worth. Low self-esteem is the biggest thing that holds you back in life and poisons your relationships. Knowing how to quiet your fear of failure when it gets triggered can help you overcome these challenges and have more love to give.

Experts, therapists, and thought leaders have spent decades trying to find ways to improve self-esteem and eliminate the fear of failure. They give all kinds of techniques and advice about how to love and believe in yourself, but very little of it has worked.

This is because they have not addressed the root of the issue. They are not getting down to the foundational subconscious belief that causes fear of failure to begin with.

The real problem with your self-esteem is a deep foundational belief that seems so innocuous you probably haven’t noticed it. It has to do with the way you have been taught to see human value as something measurable.

The root problem with self-esteem comes from a subconscious belief that human value must be earned and can change.

You subconsciously believe that human value is based on your appearance, performance, property, opinions, and what others think of you. You believe that if these things are good, you have more value and you might even be better than other people. However, this also means if you gain weight, lose money, or do something stupid, you have less value than other people. Because of this belief (that human value can be earned or lost), your sense of self-worth goes up and down depending on how you look, what you do, and who you are comparing yourself to today.

This is what you must understand - If you see human value as changeable and earnable, you will always fear you aren’t good enough. You will always find people who seem to be better than you in some area, and you will always see yourself as not quite enough. The belief that human value can be earned is the real reason you are afraid of failure.

The good news is that you change this foundational belief and replace it with a better one, and it will finally give you power over your fear of failure. For this to work, however, you must change the entire system you use to determine the value of all human beings.

You must decide that from now on you will see all human beings as having the same, infinite, unchangeable value, no matter what they do, believe, or how they look. You must see value as unchangeable and unearnable.

This means human value cannot be based on appearance, performance, property, or anything else. Human value must come from the simple fact that we are each a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable soul. You must see human value as an Intrinsic thing, not an Extrinsic or Systemic thing. It doesn’t come from outside of you and it isn’t earned. You have it the moment you are born, and it cannot change.

Think about a Newborn baby

Think about how much we value that precious, innocent life. Babies have incredible value to us, yet they have done nothing to earn that value except simply exist. They can’t talk, walk, or even take care of themselves. They are not intelligent and haven’t accomplished anything. They do not earn their value, yet we acknowledge they have it.

The good news is you are still that baby. Even though you have grown up and worked hard to look good, perform, and learn things, your value still comes from your Intrinsic existence, not your Extrinsic qualities. Nothing is required to prove your worth. You don’t earn it, and you can’t lose it.

There will be some of you who reject this idea though. You will want to hold onto the idea that human value is earned and people who don’t earn it have less value. You might like seeing people who do nothing or do bad things as having less value than the rest of us. You might like the idea that value is earned, and your accomplishments make you better than others.

It is fine if you decide to believe this still, however, you need to understand what comes along with it - a constant fear that you aren’t good enough. If you see value as earned, you will always be afraid you aren’t quite enough. That is just how it works.

If you want to see yourself as good enough and even love yourself, you must change this belief and you must be willing to give up all judgment of other people. No matter what they do, you must see them as having the same value as you. This is the trick. You must value give it to get it. The more you work at seeing others value as the same and unchangeable, the more you will believe that your value is infinite too. You will now know you are enough.

This does not mean you allow abuse or bad behavior from others though. You will still have strong boundaries and stay away from people who hurt you. You will carefully choose who you want in your life and who your friends will be. You will just do this from a place of equal value, not superiority. 

If you give up judgment and have more compassion for others and their mistakes, you will also gain more compassion for yourself and your mistakes. If you see their value as unchanging, you will also see your value as unchanging.

Special note to parents

It is crucial to teach this belief to your children. Having this belief creates kids who don’t fear failure, losses, or mistakes because they know it doesn’t affect their value. There is no greater gift you could give your child than to teach them this principle. Regardless of their grades, sports performance, or how many friends they have, they always have the same value as every other person on the planet. They cannot be ‘not good enough’, because it isn’t even possible.

This perspective shift will completely change your life too, if you adopt it. You will feel safer everywhere you go, and you will have a greater capacity to love others.

Imagine if you start to see the difficult people in your life as perfect teachers who are here to trigger your fears and bring them to the surface so you can heal them. You might stop seeing them as threats and even see them as gifts. If you can choose to love them where they are and see their value as the same as yours (even if it is from afar), it will dramatically improve your self-esteem, because compassion for others leads to self-love.

Closing Message

Choose to see all human beings as the same as you in worth, no matter their differences, and interact with them as equals, peers, and even parts of yourself. As you choose to value them intrinsically, you are also choosing to value yourself this way. The more you do this, the more balanced and in Clarity you will become.

Buy Kim's complete book on the 12 Shapes How Humans are Wired on Amazon