The first step on your journey to facing fear is changing your mindset. When it comes to learning new things, says psychologist Professor Carol Dweck, you either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset promotes results-driven thinking. With a fixed mindset, you focus on the outcome of a task, not it’s process. If you attempt a task and the outcome is unsuccessful, you assume the outcome will never be successful. Worse, the deeper you settle into this mindset, the more likely you are to dismiss something as unachievable before you’ve even tried it.
A growth mindset focuses on a task’s process rather than its outcome. As a result, those with growth mindsets see difficulties as positive challenges rather than roadblocks to success and reframe mistakes as learning opportunities. With a growth mindset, you’re more likely to embrace risk. Fear of failure doesn’t come into the equation because, in the growth mindset way of thinking, there’s nothing to fear about failure!
Here’s some good news: nothing is fixed about a fixed mindset, and it’s never too late to cultivate a growth mindset. Begin by expecting less. Have you always dreamed of writing a book? Don’t sit down to write with the aim of finishing a novel in six months. Sit down to write with the aim of writing. When you don’t attach expectations to a new challenge, you’re more likely to engage with the process. Seeing value in the process, not the results, mitigates that fear of failure, which is blocking you from achieving.
To really embrace a growth mindset, follow the advice of US First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Don’t live your life on the sidelines. Embrace the things that you shrink from doing. Chase the dreams you think are too big. Even if you fail, you’ll grow along the way.
