Fear is a huge stumbling block for many small business owners, as we discussed in our blog Is Fear of Failure Controlling You? Fear can hold you back in both your personal and professional life, and end up costing you big! So we thought it really wouldn't hurt to give you a bit more on dealing with fear.
There are two ways to react to fear:
1. F.E.A.R. - FORGET EVERYTHING AND RUN
OR
2. F.E.A.R. - FACE EVERYTHING AND RISE
Let's look at this a little more...
Story Time
You've stayed up late organising a big email campaign and with quite a bit of relief and satisfaction you hit schedule on the first email to go out and head to bed. You give yourself the luxury of a late wake up time, knowing that you've done the work and at 8am your client list will be recieving the first of a very well organised campaign of emails.
At 8.05am you wake up with a start. You made a mistake. Perhaps a forgotten link or you left a zero off the price... Yeakk!! What now?
You have two choices:
1 Forget everything and run - or hide under the blankets and lament your failure.
or
2. Face everything and rise - jump out of bed and say to yourself "I made a boo boo" and see what you can do to fix the problem.
Moving on
You're human, you're going to make mistakes but as we talked about previously it's about what you do with those mistakes. So here is more on dealing with fear.
- It won't help your business to panic, flounder, sulk or curl up in a ball and hide. But as we just said, you are human, so give yourself a few minutes to have the tantrum or experience the pain. Allow those few minutes and then move on! You've wallowed, now fix it!
- So you've sent out a correction email, now what? Well what have you learned from your mistake? Perhaps to get your work proofed (double proofed!) before you send it out? Maybe you've learned that if you'd had more time, you would have been more careful? Whatever the lesson (and there will be at least one for every mistake!), record it, analysise it and move on with the new lesson learned.
Imagine if
Now just in case you're feeling too demoralised to do the above, let's look at someone who made heaps of mistakes but kept going and learning after each one: Elon Musk.
2006: 1st Rocket Launch
1st explosion
2007: 2nd Rocket Launch
2nd explosion
2008: 3rd Rocket Launch
3rd explosion
2013: 1st Rocket Faliure during experimental droneship landing
2014: 4th Rocket Launch
2nd and 3rd explosions during droneship landings
2016: 4th, 5th and 6th explosions during droneship landings
Now in the end, as I'm sure you know, Elon Musk has mastered the art of failing successfully. Very successfully, his net worth is $14.8 billion.
Fail better
As Samuel Beckett said "Try again. Fail again. Fail Better." A philosophy that Elon Musk has embraced. In so doing, surrounding himself with people that will continue to help his commitment to moving forward, taking action and growing. A philosophy and work ethic that meant the creation of the Tesla.
I got to drive in a Tesla on my last trip to America, it was pretty cool. It's also something I couldn't have done if Elon Musk had allowed his failures to stop him in 2006, 2007, 2008... you get the point!
Any of this sound relevant to you? Give Beryl a call today to get off that roller coaster and start smashing through your income ceiling.
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