The Mindset Mentor - Master Your Mindset: Conquering the Fear of Failure

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast, the number one mindset podcast in the entire world. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you live in the United States or Canada and you want to get inspirational text messages and videos from me throughout the week, text me right now 512-580-9305 and I will go ahead and send you messages sporadically throughout the week. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about the fear of failure. Probably the number one fear that I see that holds people back the most.

Starting point is 00:00:42 There's many times where I'm running a Zoom or I'm on a call or I'm in front of a group of people and I'll be on a weekly session with my Mindset Mentor University people and I'll say, hey, what's everyone's number one fear that holds them back from creating the life they want? 90 to 95% of the time, it's the fear of failure. Like without fail, it's always the fear of failure

Starting point is 00:01:04 dominates it. Are there other ones? The fear of rejection, the fear of not being loved, all of failure. Like without fail, it's always the fear of failure dominates it. Are there other ones? The fear of rejection, the fear of not being loved, all of that. Yes. But the fear of failure is the one that dominates everyone else's head. And so I decided I'm going to do an episode specifically on the fear of failure. I believe personally that fear is absolutely 100% the worst thing in the world. You know, it stops us from chasing our dreams. That's it. Like fear gets in the way of chasing our dreams. It stops people from having the life that they truly want. It stops people from starting that business. It stops people from pursuing that dream. Fear is also the root of hate. When you fear something, when you have hate, you hate that

Starting point is 00:01:48 thing because you fear what you do not know. And so the fear holds everybody back from creating the life that they want. But also, in my opinion, it is also the root of hate because you fear what you do not know. And if you truly knew someone else, another person, like I'm talking about, like you freaking knew them, you wouldn't hate ever hate somebody. You would understand them. You know, if you knew and you understood the other person, their past, what they've gone through, their, the things that have been terrible in their lives, everything that happened to them, you can never hate them, which means that fear is the root of all of the problems. You know, it's like fear is the root of any type of war. I fear your country and what your country will do and could act first. So

Starting point is 00:02:30 I'm not going to have you beat me. So I'm going to attack first. You know, I'm going to go to war with you because I have a fear of you guys attacking me and I have a fear of death. And so we're going to go ahead and go on the quote unquote offensive, right? And so when we look at fear, in my opinion, fear is the worst thing that exists in the world. So it holds us back from creating the life that we want, but then also at the same time, it is the root of hate. And so when we look at fear and we look at the fear of failure specifically, when you look at the fear of failure, the fear of failure really, interestingly enough, has nothing to do with failure. It's a fear that all of my

Starting point is 00:03:07 insecurities will come to light. So, you know, if I go out there and I go, you know what, I'm going to start a business and I'm going to start this business. And I have the fear of what if this business fails? It's not really the failure of the business that I'm afraid of. It's that when the business, I'm sorry, if the business fails, then I'm going to finally see I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not intelligent. I'm not worthy of X, Y, Z. And so it's not really the actual event of the failure that I'm afraid of. It's I'm afraid that if this happens, all of my insecurities that I try to run from, that I try to act like don't exist, will then come to light. Because at the center of everyone's fears is I'm

Starting point is 00:03:51 not good enough. And if I fail, it will be shown to me that I am not good enough to succeed. So what do most people choose? Oh, well, instead of that, instead of seeing my insecurities, I would rather live a life of mediocrity so I don't have to see the places where I'm not good enough. I fear being judged. And so I won't start that business because if it fails, I know for sure someone's going to judge me. So I don't want to be judged. And if I do fail in this business, oh my God, I'm probably going to be judged even harder. And so a lot of times, most times the fear of failure literally has nothing to do with failure in the first place. It's that if I do fail, my insecurities

Starting point is 00:04:30 that I'm trying to run from are going to come to light. So if you've ever felt the fear of failure, what are the insecurities that failing would bring to light? Think about that for a second. What are you running from? What are you so afraid to see? Because in this case, one of my favorite quotes that goes along with this is that the cave that you're afraid to enter holds the treasure that you seek. The thing that you're afraid to do holds the treasure that you seek, the freedom that you're trying to get from not feeling worthy, not having enough self-worth, not feeling like you're good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, whatever it might be, not going to be a good parent. Because when you screw up, you're not failing. This is a crazy part about it. Like I've personally, now I'm 37 years old, but I started

Starting point is 00:05:13 in my first business at 19. So I've been failing for half of my, I've been fucking up things for half of my life all the time, right? When you screw up, that's not failing. I have, I screw up every single day, multiple times a day in everything that I do in my business, everything. But that's not failing, that's screwing up. And we tend to look at screw ups as failure. Failure is not final. Failure is just a function. It's something that you're supposed to learn from. It's falling more than anything else. You fell down. Okay, well, what are you supposed to learn from it? You only actually fail at something when you give up on that thing. So if I want to, let's go back to the business example, right? If I want to start this

Starting point is 00:05:53 business and I'm afraid of failure, if I go out and I run this business for six months and I still don't get into the positive, like I'm still running a negative and I haven't gotten the revenue to where I want to be. Like, let's say, for instance, I want to get my revenue to $10,000 a month in six months. And in six months, I'm at $1,000 a month. I haven't failed. There's no failure in there. I've screwed up. I've messed up. But through that, I've learned how not to bring in $10,000 a month. When you fail, I'm sorry, when you fall, that's not failure. And so the only time you actually fail is when you give up. So if you get to six months and go, oh my gosh, I'm at one-tenth of my goal. I'm not going to do this anymore. That is when it becomes a failure. When you gave up and think about this,

Starting point is 00:06:45 how many times have you given up on yourself throughout your life? When you see someone that's successful, you just see someone who just didn't give up. That's all that you see. You see a stubborn person who can't give up. That's really what you see. The most successful people are the most stubborn people. You know, if you look at Honda, the creative Honda has a quote that says success is 99% failure. That's what it is. The great thing about success, the really great thing about success is you just have to not fail one time. You just have to not screw up one time. You just have to find success one time. So it's literally like opening a bunch of doors and none of them work and none of them work and none of them work and none of them work for a month, two months, six months, a year, two years. And then eventually you find the one that works. You know, like I always say to people, if I said, Hey, if I, if I gave you like, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:33 when you look at a janitor in the movies and they have that big, huge ring and on the ring, they have like 500 keys. What if I gave you one, one of those rings with 10,000 keys? what if I gave you one of those rings with 10,000 keys and I was like hey this is a door right here one of these keys works but on the other side of this door is one million dollars would you go through every single key to find out which one works absolutely now does that mean that all of the other keys were failures? No, they were just the one that didn't work. Really, that's how success is. It's the same way.

Starting point is 00:08:13 It's 9,999 screw-ups, then you finally get the one key that works. And does it take time? It does. Everybody wants success immediately. Everybody wants instant gratification. But it takes years to build something that's really great. There's a reason why the phrase Rome wasn't built in a day exists. Like when I look back to me and just my business and this podcast is a great example, right? Like the podcast did

Starting point is 00:08:35 decent. When I started in 2015, it did decent. We did pretty well, but for about three years, so it was 2015, 2016 started growing for about three or four years. I was level at the exact same number every single month for about three or four years, almost no growth. And then something happened in 2020 and it was like a hockey stick moment. And the numbers went from like pretty level to just like, holy crap, it exploded. But it took me starting the business or starting the podcast in 2015, five fucking years to get to 2020, where it finally had that hockey stick moment. I had five years of being so freaking stubborn to not give up before it finally took off. Most people are not willing to continue to keep going until they find success, right? I've screwed up many times in growing this podcast and

Starting point is 00:09:25 growing this, the business that I have. I just, you know, didn't wake up and go, oh my gosh, we're doing a couple million downloads a year. No, I didn't wake up and get to this point, you know? And it took time to get to a point. And so, you know, it was crazy where we were like, you know, leveling off at like a hundred thousand downloads a month for years. And then it like 40 X'd in a couple months. And so it's like, when I off at like 100,000 downloads a month for years. And then it like 40 X in a couple of months. And so it's like, when I look at the podcast, I look at my business, I look at everything that I do. I probably succeed like 5% of the time. The rest is just me throwing stuff at the wall and trying to find out what sticks, you know? And like, for me, when I, the, I keep

Starting point is 00:10:00 using the podcast as an example, but like when I first started the podcast, I had read an article. It says the average person who starts a podcast does seven episodes and then they quit. And this was back in 2015 when not many people did podcasts. And I thought to myself, all right, I just, I'll do 14. And if I like it at 14, I just won't stop. And if I don't stop, I'll probably figure it out. I'll probably succeed. I committed to 14. We're at over 1300 podcast episodes at this point. And so it just, it just, it takes time, almost 300 million downloads. It just takes time and people are not willing to put in the time. I just didn't stop. I'm not that great. I just didn't stop. And so I want you to understand the exact same thing. Like you're going to fail. You're going

Starting point is 00:10:43 to mess up. I've had, I failed many times. I've had bad reviews. I've had crappy comments. I've had emails saying that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but I didn't care what other people were saying. I just kept going. And so you got to start to think about this. Like, where could you be in your life if you stopped listening to the fear of failure and just started whatever it is that you want to start?

Starting point is 00:11:05 And then when you quote unquote failed or fell or screwed up, whatever it is that you want to call it, what if you just kept going and you didn't stop? Where could you be in five years? How different could your life be today? Like I told you, it took me five years of the podcast before it finally really exploded. Where could you be in five years if you stopped listening to the fear of failure, if you stopped paying attention to what other people said, and you just started doing something and you just decided, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to put five years into this thing. The problem is that most people are not willing to put five years into something. And so you have to, and it's a great example of the Chinese bamboo. You put the seed inside of

Starting point is 00:11:41 the ground, you water it, you give it sun, and Chinese bamboo does not grow outside of the soil for about five to six years. And at year five, year six, it will grow up to 80 feet in six months. That's what success looks like. It's five years of screwing it up and trying to figure it out. You have to have something that I call failure amnesia. You know, don't think I call failure amnesia. Don't think about the times that you failed. Think about your successes.

Starting point is 00:12:13 Even if it's just once, think about why you will succeed versus why you haven't in the past. Because what's more important is your future, not your past. Your past doesn't dictate your future. Why can I say that? I've had multiple failed businesses in the past, quote unquote failed. I learned a lot from them. But it doesn't mean that when I start this business or when I started this business, that it would fail because I had other failed businesses. Cause it's, you never walk through the same river twice. I'm not the same person and it's not the same river. I'm not the same person as I was when

Starting point is 00:12:37 I had those failed businesses. And you know, the business is not the same as it was back then. And so you have to understand that when you look at the fear of failure, it's usually not the fear of failure in the first place. There's insecurities that are behind it. And what you really have to understand is that your fear will never go away. Fear will probably be omnipresent in your life. Successful people are not fearless. I hate when someone says, and now we're going to bring up our fearless leader and they say their name. fearless. I hate when someone says, and now we're going to bring up our fearless leader, and they say their name. No, your fearless leader is not fearless. They are scared shitless a lot of the time. But the difference is they do it anyways. They feel the fear and they do it anyways. You have to learn to do the same. For me, I'm more afraid of dying and not seeing my true potential

Starting point is 00:13:22 than I am the fear of failure. That's if I were to, to, to get to the end of my life and be on my deathbed and not realize my full potential, that's what I'm afraid of way more than somebody judging me or someone rejecting me or the fear of failure in some sort of way that drives me to do more. I, and to be honest with you, like I expect failure. I expect failure. You have to expect failure. You have to expect not doing it the way that you want to. And maybe I'll take the word failure out. You have to expect screwing up. You have to expect falling. You have to expect all of that. But those are the moments when you learn the most and you have to feel the fear and do it anyways. You have to

Starting point is 00:13:58 kind of like dance with the fear. It's like the tango, right? You got to dance with it. It's going to be there. It's not leaving you. And so it's more like, okay, I know the fear is going to be here. I know this feeling. I know what it feels like. You know what? I'm going to do it anyways. I'm going to dance with this fear. I'm going to allow this fear to, is it possible that I can use this fear to actually create something better versus it holding me back? Is there a way to use it to make something better? If you're writing a book and you have a fear that it's going to be this shit book, can you use that fear instead of stopping you from putting the book out? Can you use that fear to go, you know what? I'm going to do some extra editing sessions. I'm going to do some more research. I'm going to look at this book and say, can I make this even better? And now

Starting point is 00:14:39 you're using the fear to actually make a better book versus stopping you from writing the book in the first place. So instead of fear paralyzing you, it can then propel you to do something better. The issue with fear is that you've trained yourself. We've all trained ourselves with fear. We feel fear and we stop. We feel fear and we stop. We feel fear and we stop. It's kind of like Pavlov's dogs. They ring the bell, bing bing, and then when the bell rings, they give him a treat. And then they ring the bell and they give him a treat. They ring the bell and they give him a treat. And eventually they ring the bell and the dog, its mouth starts salivating. Its body is already expecting that treat. You've trained yourself to feel fear and back off. You need to retrain your brain. You need

Starting point is 00:15:17 to retrain yourself that when I feel fear, because fear, we all know that your comfort zone is what you have to get out of in order to create the life you want, right? that your comfort zone is what you have to get out of in order to create the life you want, right? Because your comfort zone is where you currently are. So if I'm going to change something, if I'm going to change my life, I need to get out of my comfort zone. Well, the beautiful thing about fear is that fear is the physical manifestation in your body of your comfort zone.

Starting point is 00:15:39 When you feel fear, it is showing you that you have reached the end of your comfort zone. So instead of backing away, which is staying in your comfort zone, lean in just a little bit. Oh my gosh, I'm feeling really a whole lot of fear right now. Why am I? Okay. It's probably because I'm at the edge of my comfort zone. So instead of backing away, I'm going to lean in just a little bit more, right? You have to retrain your brain to move towards the fear versus moving away from the fear. Expect the fear. It's going to be there. It's going to be omnipresent. Do it anyways. Dance with the fear versus moving away from the fear. Expect the fear. It's going to be there. It's going to be omnipresent. Do it anyways. Dance with the fear. And remember this, you only have to succeed one time. That's the beautiful thing about it. So that's what I got for you for today's

Starting point is 00:16:15 episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Once again, for those of you that are in the United States and Canada, if you want to see the inspirational texts and videos from me to your phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Master Your Mindset: Conquering the Fear of Failure

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