10 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Failure

Question: What’s your best tip for overcoming the fear of failure?

Diversify

“When I have many irons in the fire, I feel far less desperation around the success of any one. In fact, it is their cumulative successes that has created our brand identity at RTC.” — Corey Blake, Round Table Companies

Embrace a Terrible First Draft

“We tend to compare our own blooper reel to everyone else’s highlights reel. Instead just start with a first draft and embrace the fact it might be terrible. But the second try or draft will be better, the third even better. For me the only failure is not improving (or trying in the first place).” — Kelly Azevedo, She’s Got Systems

Failure Is Not the Opposite of Success

“If you chose to do something and “failed,” you received valuable feedback on what to do or not to do in the future. If you chose not to do something (this most often takes the form of “waiting” or “thinking about it”), you are guaranteed to be in the same position until you decide to do something about it. Failure is progress. Stagnation is what should be feared.” — Brennan White, Cortex

Failure Is Growth

“The risks of starting and running a business are great, and there are times when you may be tempted to throw in the towel. However, it’s important to remind yourself that with every failure you experience in business, there is another lesson learned that will aid your company and team moving forward.” — Zach Cutler, Cutler PR

Travel Will Broaden Your Perspective

“Go to the Third World, get out of your bubble and realize that even if you fail, life is not so bad.” — Raaja Nemani, BucketFeet

You Won’t Succeed Without Overcoming

“If fear of failure is disabling you from trying or starting at all, then you won’t succeed or truly fail. Instead, you will remain the same — which in the business world is as close to failure as you can get without calling it that. Realize that by encouraging a fear of failure, you have failed yourself and your business because you will neither succeed nor improve with lessons learned.” — Fabian Kaempfer, Chocomize

So What If You Fail?

“Most entrepreneurs are playing a high-risk game, so fear of failure comes with the territory. In the worst case scenario, you fail, but so what? It will free up your time to work on your next business, and you will have more knowledge about starting and running a business. Just remember: fear makes you human, and when you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.” — Nikki Robinson, Gloss and Glam

Regret Is Worse Than Failure

“When I fear failure, one thing that never fails to overcome that fear is thinking about the terrible feeling of regret. Regret lasts much longer than failure, and it is a thousand times worse. When you fear failure and quit, be warned that regret will always be right around the corner.” — Phil Chen, Systems Watch

Failure Is Like Practice

“I try to think of failure like exercise or practice. You’re going to do things, and you’re going to be terrible at first. The more you do it, the better you will get as time goes on. You will learn a lot if you look at failure as practice.” — Henry Balanon, Protean Payment

You Must Fail to Learn Success

“Do something incorrectly. Make a mistake. Mess up. Then, learn from it. Don’t run from the failure. Evaluate your shortcomings, and use that to propel yourself into your future endeavors. If you never fail, you will never know when you’ve reached true success.” — Joe Apfelbaum, Ajax Union

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

This article was originally published on StartupCollective.