Even if you have the greatest ideas and the best skill set to implement them, fear can often creep into your mind and keep you from achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself. This is even true in business, and it can be especially detrimental in this setting if you allow your fears to affect your work. Instead of allowing that to happen, though, use these five tips to ensure that your fears don’t hold you back from meeting your business goals.
1. Accept Your Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone knows that other people make mistakes too. In business, however, even a small mistake can seem like a death sentence that will have your job on the line. It is exactly this mentality that can ruin a business or keep you from ever achieving your business goals Often it is not the mistake itself, but the paralyzing self doubt or self critique that keeps people from moving forward from their mistakes. Instead of letting this happen to you, actively work to change your frame of mind. It’s an old adage, but the saying “learn from your mistakes” is meant for situations just like these. Recognize and understand where you went wrong, and move forward. Don’t let yourself get bogged down. That will only lead to more mistakes in the future.
2. Embrace Change
Forbes contributor Kathy Caprino wrote about her own research where she found that many people are unable to achieve their business goals because they cannot envision or make the changes required to meet those goals. Often times, change can seem like an end. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, the only way to achieve your goals is to completely put a stop to the old methods and change to new ones. Caprino suggests doing more than just embracing the changes that are forced upon you, and she goes so far as to suggest changing on your own in small doses every day. By constantly experiencing change, you can become more adaptable and work better in any situation. Change, then, does not just become an end. Instead it becomes a pathway to something else, a training for the new direction.
3. Be Clear and Firm about Your Goals
Setting clear and developed goals for yourself is the first step in achieving those goals. If you unsure or unaware of your goals, you will never reach them. This much is clear, but how exactly to go about doing that and what exactly is meant by these goals is less clear. This WPamplify blog post does a good job of articulating how to set goals for marketing strategy, but the advice it gives generally holds true for all situations. When determining your goals, it is important to clearly articulate them for yourself and for those helping you reach them. Furthermore, when articulating these goals, you should make sure to set clear actions for achieving the goal and to set deadlines for yourself to keep you accountable. By setting such firm goals for yourself as well as rules to work by and a timeline, you will be less likely to let fear come between you and achieving those goals.
4. Take No Excuses from Yourself
On an average day, most people probably make more excuses to themselves than they do to all the other people they interact with combined. Sometimes these excuses are legitimate, and those should be recognized and dealt with. More often, though, the excuses we tell ourselves are just ways of masking our fears and avoiding achieving our goals. Instead of allowing this to happen, change your mindset. Whenever you find yourself making an excuse to yourself of why you can’t take a specific action, ignore it. When your mind tells you that there is some baseless reason not to act, then that is exactly the time you should be acting and making sure you are reaching for your goals. Excuses are typically just a rearticulation of a fear of failure. That being said, if you follow through with an excuse, you are guaranteed to fail. Therefore, if you recognize that you are making excuses, ignore them and act.
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help
We have all heard this since we were children. Unfortunately, stubbornness and pride that comes with age sometimes makes this lesson the hardest to follow. If you find yourself struggling, whether it is with fears or any situation, asking for help can often be the best approach. Not only does asking for help increase your chance of fixing the issue or surmounting the problem, it also gets others invested in you, your ideas, and your work. If others are able to help you with your work, they will be more likely to consider you in the future and want to help and support you more because of the time and effort they originally put in to helping you in the first place. That being said, there is never really a valid excuse for not asking for help if you need it.
