#033 Overcome Fear Of Failure

In this article, I focus on failure, how to handle failure, and how to turn it into a win. 

We’re getting to the end of the year and probably the biggest thing that people are struggling with, many of us, is not being able to achieve the goals that we set ourselves. 

I’m going to share a specific way to deal with failure, and how to turn it around. Because year after year, we’re creating goals, and then failing to achieve them. 

And that diminishes our self-esteem and our ability to trust ourselves.

It creates the worst effect on our confidence, and our ability to follow through and create the life you want. 

As a person who achieved lots in his life, what I find all the time is that we achieve and create so much in our lives yet we have this extreme fear of failure. 

But, failure is the key to success. You’re going to understand by the time we get to the end of this. 

Most people decide to fail right from the offset because they’re so scared about failure. 

They sabotage themselves right from the beginning. 

So, my focus will be on how to actually win every single year. 

We’re in the last quarter of the year and it’s that time of year when people start setting themselves goals. 

I’m not talking about New Year’s resolutions.

I’m talking about setting themselves goals for the coming year, to create the year that they want. 

GOAL SETTING POWER 

To be completely frank, you need to set life goals because goals give you a point of focus.

They give you something to work towards creating. And if you’re not creating anything in life, then you’re going to be really upset with yourself. 

Without goals, we can feel unfulfilled. 

After a period of time, say a year, two years, five years, or 10 years, and you haven’t set any goals for yourself or created any dreams in your life, then you’re going to feel like your life is directionless. 

A lot of people suffer from this. They feel like they’re going nowhere in life. 

It’s because they’re not deciding ahead of time where they want to go. 

So to get somewhere and achieve something, you’ve got to decide ahead of time. 

That includes how you want to feel and how you want to grow.

You’ve got to grow as a person because your growth means your relationships grow. 

You will see your business grow, your career grows, your life grows, and life is about evolving. 

Yes, we’re created on a natural disposition of the Fitrah, which is a natural state of goodness. But within that, we’re on a journey and we’re evolving. 

If you’re not evolving, you’ll feel like you’re stuck. You’re going to feel prehistoric like you’re still doing the same old stuff that you were doing as a kid.

When you first did those things as a kid or a teenager, you loved it. But it’s no longer new, you’ve been doing it for ages.

So goals are important.

A problem that we all have is that we fear failing in those goals.

You feel like you’re battling with failed goals year in and year out. 

This happens to a lot of people. Even the super successful people. 

So you’re struggling with those same old challenges. And worst of all, you keep setting yourself the same goal every year, never realising them.

And you become bogged down in this feeling or those thoughts that you’re such a failure.

You have never-ending Waswas, the whispers that are constantly grinding you down. 

THE JOYSUCKING STRUGGLE 

The interesting thing is you’ve been successful in many areas of life, but there’s one area that you want to develop and it really drags you down. 

Everyone else could be looking at you thinking what a great person, how successful, you’ve achieved so much. 

So many great things, how could you possibly not be happy? 

That’s what they’re saying to you. And you’re thinking, yeah, I’m totally grateful for all those things. 

But inside, you’re feeling like a fake. You feel like there’s a lack of integrity, that you’re not authentic, and that you can’t do this anymore. 

You stay silent about it because you’re worried that you’ll look ungrateful and unappreciative. 

But inside you’re feeling it. That’s the problem, right?

You’ve taken courses, you’ve done all sorts of stuff to develop as a person, but you still feel like you’re no further.

That can suck the life and joy out of your daily life. 

Many of us struggle with these things. But who’s beating you up? 

Are other people beating you up? Or are you giving yourself a mental beating? 

We do this to ourselves without realising it. 

We allow this to spiral out of control.

Now, that’s when you have someone like me come along and then remind you about the verse of the Quran where Allah (swt) says,

لَا يُكَلِّفُ اللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا وُسْعَهَا

Allah does not burden a soul except [with what is within] its capacity.

He doesn’t burden a soul or a person with what they can’t handle. 

YOU CAN HANDLE YOUR LIFE

Everything in your life is manageable. 

And now you really give yourself a beating. Because then you start to ask yourself, well, how come I can’t handle it? Everyone else can. 

The truth is you can handle everything in your life. But you’re probably telling yourself you can’t.

But you can.

The great thing is that you don’t have to go through this terrible, horrible emotional meltdown if you realise what’s going on in your life.

So, there are two things to get out of this.

Number one is that there’s nothing wrong with you. 

You may be thinking, there must be something wrong with me, doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter how much I get, I’m never happy. 

There is nothing wrong with you. And Allah(swt) has always taken care of you and is continuously taking care of you. 

Number two is you can absolutely handle life. You can handle anything in your life as long as you stay in reality.

The minute you lose yourself in your horrible thoughts, then you’re going to find it difficult to handle.

Let’s take the example of failing with our goals.

You can apply this across the board. 

But if we look at the personal goals that you want to achieve, whether it’s a career, business, or personal development, you’ve probably set yourself some goals in your life every single year that you reset every new year, because you’re not achieving them.

Maybe it’s a personal goal to be a better person.

To become the best version of yourself but you keep losing it with your kids, or you keep losing your temper, or you keep having mood swings of some sort.

You said this year would be different. You would stop this.

So now we’re in the last quarter, and you’re still doing it. 

Whatever your challenge is, your outbursts, or your mood swings, you’re still doing it. And you’re really beating yourself up over it. 

Because you’re thinking, another year has gone by and at this point, you probably don’t trust yourself to make those same goals again.

You’re at that point of feeling a bit hopeless.

But you can change all of that. 

Everything in your life is something that you can figure out. Everything is something that you can work out.

There’s nothing that can’t be resolved.

You have some challenges but you can resolve that. Allah(swt); the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful is always on your side. 

THE RIGHT KIND OF FAILURE

You cannot avoid failure if you want to succeed. 

What we don’t want to experience is the kind of failure that people choose. 

The kind where they decide right from the offset not to do something because they think they’re going to fail.

Their fear of failure stops them from doing anything. And that’s true failure. 

But the kind of failure that you want to embrace is the failure of trying out, the failure of experimentation. 

When I’m training my clients and my coaches, the number one thing that I focus on is embracing this type of failure because this is not true failure.

We tell ourselves it’s a failure but it’s experimentation, we’re busy trying to figure it out. 

You’ve always got Allah (swt) supporting you, all the way. That’s your safety net.

You can never fail as long as you keep on trying. And if you keep on experimenting and trying, you’re absolutely going to find the way to do it, the way to resolve it, the way to make it happen. 

Failure is only if you decide from the offset that it’s not going to work and you take no action. Or you decide not to do it.

That’s failure. 

You can do it, you’ve got support, you’re not alone. And there’s nothing wrong with you.

Whatever it takes, you can make it happen.

Now, we’re in the last quarter. And you’re still trying to make your dreams happen. 

The thing is, you’ve got to be real. Have you tried something different? 

People try the same thing over and over again, and even though it doesn’t work they keep on doing it.

It doesn’t work but they’re not looking at the feedback. 

Instead, they’re feeling like they’re messing this up. And they keep doing the same thing. 

FEEDBACK FUELS PROGRESS AND GROWTH 

Failure is when you keep doing the same thing and you’re not changing it. 

You’ve got tenacity, you’re there in the trenches doing as much as you can. But you’ve got to look at the feedback as well. 

If it’s not working, you’ve got to change it up a little to make it work.

Change things and experiment with things to figure it out. That’s how life works. The entire life process is like that.

You’ve always got a safety net, you’ve always got Allah(swt) supporting you. 

The earlier verse of Surah Baqarah that I reference, tells you clearly that you’re not going to be burdened with what you can’t handle.

That means you can handle it. That means that you’re okay, you’re going to be alright, regardless. 

We can change our feelings.

It’s the emotional outbursts that often derail us. That makes things go wrong and sometimes we revert back to the habits that we’ve created. 

The habitual thinking that we’re a failure, or that we can’t handle it, or that it’s never going to work. 

That type of thinking will force your reality to become exactly what you’re thinking about.

If you want to win, change your thinking. Change the way you feel about things.

Get excited about things and try out different ways of doing it. 

Be in the race to win it.

If you’re not in the race, you’re not going to win it, there will be no second or third place even.

The race is just the journey of life. 

That means trying things out and doing it. If it doesn’t work, you change things up. 

There’s no doubt, you’ll find a way. 

The problem that people have is their expectation of failing right from the offset. 

It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

They make that failure happen because that’s what they expect. 

You get in life what you expect.

If you change your expectations and your thinking about what the outcomes will be, then the outcome will change as well. 

The only one who’s taking action to make the outcome happen or not taking action and suffering from inaction because of their fear of failure, is you. 

The results are only ever going to be created by the actions that you take.

So not taking enough action means nothing’s going to happen. 

If you’re taking minimal action, minimal is going to happen.

You have to take massive action. Become enthusiastic about your life and try out different things, and it will work.

Life always works and you can handle it.

COMMIT TO TODAY 

Tell yourself it will always be okay. And the way you know that is by being okay today. 

The key is to feel good about yourself right from the offset. Be excited about your journey today. 

Today’s the only time that you’re present. This is life, the only time that you can enjoy is this moment. 

Putting off your happiness for a future moment or whatever goal you’re trying to achieve, will mean you’re never going to be happy.

You’re going to have a miserable journey. 

The destination is not life, the journey is life.

Enjoy your journey now. Be committed to being happy now. Not in the future, you can’t put it off, you’ve got to be happy now.

If you want to create a happy future, you’ve got to be happy now.

If you want to create an amazing future, you’ve got to experience an amazing life now. 

That’s all a choice. 

It’s about getting excited about your life. It’s about the way you think about your life today.

This makes all the difference. 

If you tell yourself, you can’t handle it, life’s so hard and it’s so difficult, then your life is going to feel like that. 

But if you tell yourself the opposite, that you can totally handle it, that you have the support of Ar Rahman who’s always been merciful to you, and you have everything you need now, then you’re going to find lots of things in your life to be grateful about right now. 

Ingratitude is never going to help you because it’s from a place of negativity, and you can’t create something positive, out of negativity. 

You can be grateful right now. You can look at your life and be happy about exactly what’s going on. 

HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE

Now, don’t think for a second that you have to be happy 24 hours a day.

Because that’s Paradise. That’s not Dunya. 

Living in the world, we have a flurry of different emotions.

Accept it. They’re just emotions.

Focus on being grateful, on being present right now in your life, and enjoying the journey. 

If you enjoy the journey, you’ll enjoy your whole life.

If you can’t enjoy the journey, you won’t enjoy your life.

Because life is a journey. It’s not the destination. The destination is Jannah; Paradise.

To have a good time, choose to have a good time. 

You can’t put off having a good time for Jannah.

Otherwise, you’ll never achieve those goals because you’re always waiting to be happy before you can achieve a goal. 

You can’t have inspired thinking, you can’t have great ideas. 

You can’t be someone who creates amazing things in the world from a place of negativity.

It’s going to be messy because the thoughts are all messy. 

Clear that mess and have grateful thoughts, happy thoughts, good expectations, and hope, then you can create whatever you want. 

The struggle is a part of the game. 

You have to be committed to today. Don’t be committed to a future, be committed to today. 

Create a day where you’re committed to your life, so you have that same self-fulfilling prophecy except that your commitment is to today, to be grateful, to take action today to make your life happen.

If you have lots of days like today, you’re going to create a pretty amazing life. We create it folk.

We create that state of happiness or unhappiness.

We create that state of joy or misery by making our thoughts real. 

The solution is in the choices you make.

Make the choice to be happy, to be grateful, and to take action.

Choose to be disciplined in committing to yourself, to your life, and committing to Allah(swt). 

If you do that, every year is a success.

Before you know it, all of your goals are just coming to fruition, just coming into your life.

Al Karim; Al Manaan, Allah (swt), the Most Generous, will just flood your life with everything that you expected from Him. 

So who says you can’t handle it? It’s certainly not Allah(swt). 

And you have the time you need.

So don’t lie to yourself that you don’t have what it takes, you can’t handle it, and that there’s something wrong with you. 

Because it’s all a lie even if it’s subconsciously. 

You can love your life today. It’s a choice. 

I would love to programme your mind with this one thought. 

It will serve you most profoundly. It’s a choice and you can love it. 

If you love it, you’re going to create an amazing life, an amazing day. 

That’s all you need to focus on. Create a great day, create a day that you can be happy with. 

Create a day where you are connected to the Most Merciful. 

Create a day where you’re serving, where you’re helping other people.

Create a day that’s not just about serving yourself, and your life will be full of blessings. 

You will be happy today and every day. But that’s all a choice. 

Being happy every day doesn’t mean you’re not going to have miserable moments. It’s just an emotion that can’t do anything to you as long as you stay dedicated and committed to your life.

You have to be committed to making things happen and stop being committed to making failures happen. 

CHOOSE YOUR TYPE OF FAILURE

You can decide on the type of failure you want.

Do you want the type of failure where you never try out anything in life?

Or do you want the type of failure that’s just a stepping stone to your success where you can enjoy every day, instead of waiting for a future day? 

My advice is to take the latter, you can do this.