A positive attitude, being flexible, and being willing to change are essential to overcoming business failure. Changing often is what makes you perfect. Winston Churchill pointed out that to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. Business failures are a fact of life. How we manage them makes a big difference in whether we succeed. As a contrast, when entrepreneurs worried about the potential of their ideas or their own ability to construct a successful business, then they were more negatively affected. Fear of failure causes people to behave in a fight, flight, or freeze manner. “It’s just an opportunity for me to be more aggressive,” stated one interviewee. Defiance is a hallmark of the entrepreneur as hero stereotype. It is the definition of courage: facing fears and taking action.
Be prepared.
Though being mentally prepared for failure and difficult times is crucial, doing so does not mean you must come up with contingency plans for every kind of failure. Once you expect that everything is going to go exactly as you had planned, once they don’t, those hard moments will be much more challenging than you had anticipated.
Find what can build your energy back up.
People who know what they need to feel better and think clearer are much more capable of handling hardship head-on than those who are less aware of themselves or their outlets for dealing with difficulties. It could be exercise, time with close friends, or going to a place that inspires you or that is isolated from the world.
Do not make emotional decisions.
As soon as something negative happens, people often make emotional decisions. However, this can be detrimental. Making rational decisions rather than emotional ones prevents your problems from compounding. Taking 5 minutes to collect yourself is worthwhile.
Have a strong support network.
When a job feels lonely, you might feel alone, but if you’re surrounded by friends, family, and mentors, you won’t feel so lonely. People around you who love you and want to make you feel important outside of work can keep you motivated. They can also serve as sources of advice and support when taking big decisions.
Re-evaluate your situation.
Whenever you fail, this is a great time to reevaluate your situation. You should consider why you failed, how you feel about it, and what you should do going forward. You might be tempted to look inside yourself if your company drastically underperformed. If that was because you failed to put in the necessary work, you might want to consider how much you really care about your work.
Problem Solving
A powerful way to reduce the fear of failure is to actively seek out flaws and weaknesses. There is significant evidence that gut instinct, tacit knowledge, and tacit knowledge lead to rapid and effective decision-making. Such instincts are often associated with feelings rather than specific thoughts. If acted upon instead of repressed or ignored, fears driven by concerns over an idea can provide important signals that work is needed. When received as such signals and acted upon, such feelings can help entrepreneurs eliminate weaknesses and flaws. Our research also shows that proactive, problem-solving measures can reduce fear when the idea itself is the source of fear. Paradoxically, research also shows that proactive action tends to be inhibited when the idea itself is the source of fear.Do not take yourself too seriously.
The feeling of failure can be overwhelming in some cases. While some failures are more severe than others, putting your situation in perspective with the overall scheme of things can be reassuring. Although it may seem difficult, everything will turn out okay in the end, even when you fail.
Disassociate the failure from yourself as a person.
It is not always easy to separate yourself from the situation when you fail. It is easy to get caught up in the failure of the company and place all the blame entirely on yourself. Everybody has to deal with failure in their lives. Imagine what the world would be like if it were easy to get everything we wanted (or thought we wanted). You’ll find it much more difficult to deal with failure if you become overly attached to it. Instead, understand and recognize the failure while moving forward happily with the goal you have set for yourself.
It is ironic that choosing impossible goals can lead to more easily rationalizing our failure to achieve them. Fear weakens the ability of entrepreneurs to set personal goals, one of the most valuable self-management tools they own. We also heard that entrepreneurs have a tendency to double down on specific goals, even when evidence indicates that they should abandon those goals. When a path is chosen, negative feedback may actually encourage increased spending on what would otherwise be considered losing strategies.
Emotional self-awareness
An individual can increase their emotional self-awareness by becoming aware of how emotions intrude upon consciousness through feelings and moods, anticipating their impact on thoughts, and using the knowledge gained to limit the effects of emotions on decisions and behavior. In competition, be aware of your feelings, moods, and how they may affect your decisions and actions.
An entrepreneur may develop neuroses through constant self-reflection, making them less able to act effectively. Effective self-monitoring tactics are learned and rehearsed off-line, rather than ‘on job’. Once self-awareness is achieved in action, it becomes more automatic and natural, allowing an action orientation that does not slow down real-time decision making. Increasing self-awareness is an excellent way to boost your entrepreneurial success. Positive emotions can have a significant impact on goal setting and decision-making when self-awareness is present.
