Ask A Results Coach: “I have recently failed at setting up my own business…”

Posted on 17 January, 2024

January is a time for fresh goals and deciding where to direct your energy – both personal and professional. But what if you’re still overcoming a professional setback?

Enter Alex Wright-Moore, a Results Coach who has kindly offered to answer some commonly asked questions she gets from clients—and share her knowledge with the HerCanberra audience.

Each month, Alex will explore some of the ways we can better understand what challenges us and empowers us to find solutions.

“I have recently failed at setting up my own business and am now scared to try anything else new. How do I overcome this fear without making bad decisions and constantly second-guessing myself?”

Fear of the unknown can be paralysing. It can cause us to doubt our own worth, what we are capable of, and the value of the contribution we can make to the world. But more dangerously, it can drown out our internal intuitive voice that is the guiding light which steers us towards what feels right and helps us to make decisions about what will work for us – and what won’t.

When the volume of our fear is dialled up so loud that we can no longer hear our intuition, it often causes us to question everything in our lives: creating a snowball of indecision and confusion where our sense of self-confidence and clarity ought to be.

But once we’ve been burned by disappointment, how do we overcome our fear of failure in a healthy way, which doesn’t lead to bad decisions or a never-ending cycle of second-guessing ourselves?

Thankfully, the answer to this question holds hope as it IS realistically achievable to carve out a life where fear is not always in the driver’s seat. This month’s column focuses on exactly that, tackling what we can do to navigate our fears and rebuild confidence after we’ve experienced a setback.

WE CAN UNDERSTAND THAT FAILURE IS AN INGREDIENT OF SUCCESS AND A GOOD TEACHER

When we make our decisions from a place of fear of failure or live with a pervading sense of self-doubt, it forces us to play small with our lives. Out of sheer self-preservation, we usually end up either:

• In a constant state of combat with the people, processes and opportunities that we perceive to be a threat (even if they could be good for us);
• Actively running in the opposite direction whenever we feel like something might be risky (even if there is a possibility that it could actually make us happy);
• Frozen on the spot and incapable of taking any of steps required to move forward; or
• Compromising on our basic needs and denying our true feelings, purely to avoid conflict.

If any of these sound familiar, it is because they describe the human mind-body ‘fight, flight, freeze or fawn’ phenomenon, which identifies the different types of biological responses we default to, when confronted with something that scares or traumatises us.

However, if we train ourselves not to fear failure and understand all the ways in which failure can be a powerful ingredient of our future success, it can flip the switch on our biological response to failure, providing a pathway to less pain and more gain.

So, how do we take the fear out of failure if we’ve suffered a huge setback which has hit us hard mentally, physically, emotionally and/or financially? Is it even possible to override this kind of fear when it is a natural evolutionary trait that exists to protect us from harm?

Put simply, in order to deactivate our fear response to failure, it is necessary to retrain ourselves to understand that ‘failure’ does not always equate to ‘harm’. If we can manage to decouple these concepts and instead reframe ‘failure’ through a lens of ‘learning, growth and progress,’ it can help us to remove our reasons for fearing failure.

For those interested in a good place to start with this practice, the TED Series on The Benefits of Failure is an exceptional resource, which can help us to think about failure differently. Similarly, the Forbes Business Council has prepared a list of 16 Top Tips for Bouncing Back From Failure which provides a wealth of ideas to aid us if we are looking to overcome our fear of failure.

Harvard Business School Professor, Amy Edmonson, also emphasises that we need to step away from ‘the blame game’ when failure occurs in our lives, so that we can instead step into focusing on what can be improved or done differently to create a better outcome next time.

To discover more of what Professor Edmonson has to say on how we can best position ourselves to learn from failure and redefine how it impacts us, check out Harvard Business Review’s comprehensive interview with Professor Edmonson below, or the article available here.

Ultimately, Professor Edmonson’s key message is clear: When we start to understand that failure can be a good teacher and that it can provide us with invaluable lessons for our future success, we begin to see that the possibility of failing allows us to develop an entire skill set which can strengthen our resilience, enhance our analytical skills and improve our personal and professional lives.

Adopting this perspective, not only brings us respite from self-criticism if we fail, but can also go a long way towards providing us with peace of mind about the situation and our circumstances.

Moreover, this viewpoint enables us to see that we do have a choice in determining whether failure is something we fear – or whether we harness the wisdom gained as a vehicle for progress toward our future goals.

WE CAN RECOGNISE THAT FEAR CAN HELP US SURVIVE, BUT NOT LET IT RULE OUR LIVES

At its worst, fear can distract us from what really matters in life and cut us off from the people, opportunities and supports which enrich our world. But can fear ever be good for us and play a positive role in our lives? Is there such a thing as a ‘healthy dose’ of fear?

According to our human biology, fear promotes our survival and has played a central role in the evolution of humans as the dominant species on planet earth.

As explained by National Geographic, on a fundamental level fear is programmed into our nervous systems from birth, and it works, instinctively, by activating the survival instincts we require to keep ourselves safe when we feel we are in danger.

This being our reality, no matter how hard we try, it would seem that fear is quite impossible for us to ever escape entirely.

So, where does this leave us?

Well, on the one hand, indeed, it is vital for us to have healthy fear radars as we move through life. But as with many things, fear operates on a spectrum and there is a point at which fear can come to have a detrimental impact upon our well-being.

“If you see a poisonous snake in your backyard, and your fear prompts you to run back into the house and close the door, that is a healthy fear. The feeling of fear is natural and helps keep you safe,” say the Better Health Channel’s medical experts. “But other fears are unhealthy and unnecessary. Sometimes, your fear makes you more cautious than you really need to be… This fear is unhealthy because it stops you doing things you might otherwise enjoy.”

When fear plays out at its best, research indicates it can have a positive effect on us when mild, in moderation and broadly predictable. However, when failure is the thing that we fear, it very rarely operates within these healthy parameters.

So, what can we do to conquer this type of fear?

As a starting point, it can be helpful to recognise when our fear of failure is playing too dominant a role in our everyday choices, actions, thoughts and decisions.

To do this, it is useful to reflect upon when and how our fear typically presents in our life (e.g. What situations trigger it and do we default to fight, flight, freeze or fawn?). Understanding the form and frequency of our fear is valuable, as it can assist us in becoming more self-aware of our catalysts and pain points: empowering us to develop strategies to course correct.

Next, if we are willing to concede that everything we do always contains an element of risk, it can have a significant impact on how we show up in the world and our state of being. If we begin with this premise and identify our comfort level when it comes to taking both personal and professional risks, it can enable us to identify whether our fears are proportionate to the reality of our circumstances.

Given that a degree of risk is inevitable in life, we can additionally ask ourselves questions such as those below, if we want to keep fear out of the driver’s seat:

• In the face of an unknown outcome, what level of risk am I comfortable with tolerating, in order to succeed in my goals and dreams?
• If I don’t succeed as I hope to, is the investment of time/money/energy/resources worth it, for the sake of better learning how to succeed?
• Will I regret not taking action if the sole reason for doing so is fear-based?
• What safeguards and support networks can I put in place in advance to ensure that I can take calculated risks and minimise the prospect of having an undesirable outcome?
• What factors are outside of my control in this situation, which may influence the outcome?
• Do I give myself permission to fail or redefine/review my objectives in the event of a setback?

In his TED talk, Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of Your Goals, author and investor Tim Ferriss also recommends creating a checklist of what we are afraid of and what we fear will happen if we take action.

In this vein, Ferriss encourages us to fully envision and write down our fears in detail, in a simple but powerful exercise he calls ‘fear-setting’, to help us to separate what we can control from what we cannot. This practice is designed to ensure that we do not let unhealthy levels of fear hold dominion over our lives, and anyone interested can watch Ferris’ full TED talk below. Similarly, more practical suggestions on how to move past a fear of failure can be found here.

WE CAN INVEST IN IMPROVING OUR PERSONAL CONFIDENCE AND SUPPORTS TO SUCCEED

Finally, rebuilding our confidence and reframing how we define ourselves following a setback event (or series of events) is vital if we want to overcome a fear of failure and avoid poor future decision making.

When we feel as if we have failed, we can often default into letting our setback define us, rather than doing the work to redefine ourselves. However, doing the work to rebuild our confidence and enhance our ability to make intuitive decisions is firmly within our power. In fact, this work is also our biggest opportunity to change our lives for the better.

So, what does ‘the work’ look like?

The following list is by no means all-encompassing, but presents a few ideas of where we can start: –

• We can make time for self-care and ensure our well-being is a priority in our lives.
• We can invest in strengthening our mental fortitude by accessing available health supports.
• We can actively pursue opportunities for growth and learning.
• We can endeavour to upskill in the areas we find most challenging.
• We can willingly engage in honest self-reflection about our pain points.
• We can seek feedback and guidance from our trusted mentors and teachers.
• We can tune into our intuition to access the answers already inside of us.
• We can forgive ourselves for not getting it right or perfect the first time.
• We can lean into our discomfort and ask ourselves the difficult questions to gain wisdom.
• We can learn to trust ourselves and our judgement again, one day and one experience at a time.

For those based in Australia, there are also a number of resources that have been specifically designed to support entrepreneurs to redefine themselves and succeed following a business setback. Becoming familiar with these supports may be of great benefit as well. To find tips to reinvent oneself after a business failure see here; to access Beyond Blue’s mental health coaching for small business owners see here; and for information on available government supports see here.

For anyone looking for a bit more, these books may also have the power to change your life.

Neither Alex Wright-Moore, nor HerCanberra receive any kickbacks, commissions, gifts or fees for mentioning anything contained within.