Being afraid to fail causes anxiety for many of us, even when we don’t realize what’s wrong. In an instant we imagine a barrage of little disasters, and our hearts begin to race. What if I mess up? What if I can’t do it? People will laugh at me. People will think I’m stupid. I might get hurt, or the sky will fall. So rather than fail, we try to relieve our anxiety by deciding to never put ourselves in a position where we could be ridiculed. If our anxiety if too great, it can even send us into depression, because we’re too terrified to even move.

Surprise, failure is good for you.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” may be a cliché, but any inventor, entrepreneur, master chef or great artist will tell you that trying and failing a few times is the only way we learn things. And it’s the only way to succeed.

Look up some of your favorite heroines or heroes, and read their stories. They all failed countless times. Sometimes it gave them more resolve, and sometimes failure actually gave them the insights they needed for the problem they were trying to solve.

Is it really failure you’re afraid of?

If you look closely at something you’re afraid you’ll fail at, is it really the mistakes you’re afraid of, or what people will think? When you’re just playing around in the kitchen, even a colossal flop is no cause for anxiety. Instead it becomes a funny story to tell your friends. But having your boss to dinner, or making cupcakes that will be scrutinized by other mom’s at your child’s school, can stress you out just thinking about them.

If you discover that fear of other people’s opinions is where your anxiety is actually coming from, then you know where you need to build your confidence, and where you need to let go. If you want to look deeper, you can ask yourself why some people’s opinions seem to matter more than others, or if you have some need for approval that was never filled.

But a faster, easier way to get over trying to please people is to just stand up and say, “I don’t care.” Okay, maybe you do still care, but at least for a minute, play the part. Be the heroine. Be an Amazon warrior, be a goddess, be a clown. See yourself as someone who rolls with the punches, and laughs at her own mistakes. Imagine the biggest mistakes you can as a sort of an enormous pratfall, with the world laughing with you, not at you, and then you can dust yourself off and start again.

People may admire perfection, but they love an occasional flaw.

In this world of constant media attention, our society seems to worship the beautiful and successful. We follow every move of celebrities and demand perfection from those we admire. And yet, nothing seems to generate more attention than when our imagined heroes fall off their pedestals, and land in some well publicized muck.

What makes a celebrity or anyone we admire lovable, however, is when they skip the pedestal and let us see them as real human beings. People who don’t get everything right the first time, people who try but don’t always succeed, people who admit their mistakes but keep on going…just like us.

When you need emotional support or want to fit in, you don’t need a fan club, you need a friend. And friends don’t want to have to look up to you. They want to see you by their sides.

Follow a plan of action.

When you’ve given up your need to please, you can focus better on the task you are afraid of failing at.

I recently read a quote from Mark Twain that sums it up well:

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”

When we are anxious and afraid of failing, we are usually looking at the end result we need to accomplish, and become frozen by the enormity of it all. But ever if we are afraid we’ll never make it, there is no reason to be afraid to start.

Accomplishing little bits of a task gives you a reason to celebrate small wins. Yes, you can do this, and now you can try the next thing you need to do. If you have problems along the way, or miss one particular mark, that does not mean that you should give up trying. A setback is not a failure. If you stumble now and then, that doesn’t mean you give up trying to walk.

Feel free to try some exciting failures.

One reason we feel so much anxiety about failure could be because we only try things that we consider vital to our lives. But about if we tried failing for fun? I will never be a figure skater. I can move forward okay, but I can’t do the little toe thing where you stop yourself in the middle of the rink. When I try that I stop myself face down on the ice. Yes, I’m clumsy, and yes I get a bruise or two. Still, I had fun trying, and failing at ice skating doesn’t bother me in the least because it is not crucial to my existence.

The more we try, fail, and have fun doing things for no reason, the more we can redefine failure, and see it as just one part of a long pattern to gain as many experiences as we can. When failure us just one more step along our journey, we have less reason for anxiety and fear.

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We all have worries and anxieties. Sometimes we worry how we’ll get through today. But a lot of our heart pounding, “I’ll never be able to do it” anxiety is about things that may never happen. Worries we have created in our minds. When we do this too often, we can even pull ourselves into depression, because we believe the weight of tomorrow is just too much to bear.

These future anxieties can be divided into two groups : those which cause us to obsess over possible worldwide disasters, and those in which we imagine personal disasters crashing down on our heads. While worrying about the fate of the universe can be upsetting, our personal fears usually cause us the most pain. Deep down the knowledge that the sun will burn out in a billion years or so is not half as worrying as knowing we have to give a speech a few months out, or we must attend a social event that makes us feel sick just thinking about it.

First, separate the worry from the reality.

At the beginning I mentioned how we worry about things that may never happen. An event or situation in our future may be real but our negative expectation to it doesn’t have to be. Dread has no place on our daily agenda.

Take a few moments to listen to whatever your worry is telling you. If you hear a lot of “what ifs,” those are the easiest to put aside. Things like, “what if I have a flat tire on the way to giving the speech? What if I mix up the date and arrive on the wrong day? What if the waitress drops a plate of food in my lap right before I get up to speak?”

How likely are any of these to happen? Not very. So one helpful trick to scare away these “what if” questions is to make them as outrageous as possible. Outrageous enough to make you laugh. “What if the waitress drops a plate of spaghetti on my head, and I trip over the microphone cord and land in the punch bowl.” Then see yourself laughing at your disaster, and everyone else enjoying the fun.

Imagining such a disaster, and making it funny can relieve a lot of stress and anxiety. It may also tell you if it is not the public speaking, for example, that is really worrying you. If your imagined fears are mostly of outside factors interfering with what you want to do, then a lack of confidence is not the problem, and it is easy to also imagine yourself taking extra time to drive or walk carefully, and to take control of your outside environment.

Dismantle your expectations of falling apart.

Sometimes we never ask “what if’ questions at all. Fear hits us fast and we jump right into picturing ourselves failing in a really big way. We know it will be awful. We know we’ll forget how to do what people expect of us, or that we’ll freeze up under pressure.

Take time to imagine yourself succeeding. Athletes visualize winning long before they play a game. Ballet dancers rehearse choreography in their minds. See yourself speaking confidently, or choosing not to crumble under anyone’s critical remarks. Smile and see yourself at peace with whatever happens. See yourself in control.

Procrastinate over future worries.

When we obsess over future problems, the best way to relieve the anxiety is simply to set the worries aside. If something in your future causes you to feel stress whenever you think about it, just stop thinking. Just stop. You have time to take positive action to make a future situation better, but if there is no action you can take, worrying now does nothing except upset today.

The idea of stopping may seem difficult, but it is really much easier than it sounds. I was depressed and tying myself up in knots recently about a commitment I made for something months away. When I finally realized what I was doing to myself, I was able to simply say, “not now.” And it was done.

Fans of the books and television series, The Game of Thrones, know Sirio the sword master. While training young Arya to fight, he teaches her about facing death. He tells her all we need to say to death is “not today”.

I find that idea to be excellent for relieving anxiety about the future. Whatever lies ahead of us, real or imagined, we can always say to our worries, “not today”.  Today is too precious to waste on what may never happen. All that will ever matter is what is happening now.

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