If you knew in your heart you could have anything you want, do anything you want, or be anything you wanted, what would you go for? A new house? New car? Would you ask someone on a date that you wouldn’t have approached in a million years? Would you start a new business? Expand the one you already have? Move it in new directions? What? What would you do? What could you be? What could you have? What would your life look like?

So why don’t you? What keeps you from going for the things you’d like to have, to be, to do? Fear of failure. Nothing more. Doubting that you have what it takes to get it done. Spending your time wondering, “What if I can’t do it?” or thinking, “I’ve never done that before, I probably can’t do that.”

So you quit thinking about it. You let your dream die, or worse, you quit dreaming at all. Every day, you die a little more inside because you’re afraid.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be afraid any more. You can dream again, you can have, be, do whatever you want! Is your mouth watering a little? Do you see a little glimmer of hope? Good!

Conquering your fear of failure

First of all, understand this: the fear of failure isn’t a natural fear. It’s something you’ve learned; something you’ve trained yourself to do. You’ve made your own rules that tell you when you should think you’ve failed.

So change the rules.

You can do that. You can change the rules—after all, you’re the one that made them. What are your rules for deciding you’ve failed? Not reaching a goal? Not accomplishing something you’ve wanted to accomplish?

Maybe you should decide that they only way you can fail is by giving up. That as long as you’re moving toward your goal, you’re not failing. You may not accomplish the outcome you’re hoping for, but you’ve learned something in the process. You’re learning to talk to people, to assert yourself, to build something, to do something, maybe to learn a new skill. How can that be called failure?

What would you do if you KNEW you couldn’t fail? Would it change what you go for?