How to cope with fear of failure

bySergioBersa

191 followers

Updated 8 years ago

Hello there. I am still kind of a newbie here, since I joined WE and the world of affiliate programs only three weeks ago, so I thought it may be worth talking about something that almost all newbies have to face, especially when it comes to post their first articles: fear of failure. In a way, I'm writing this post for myself first, than for everybody else :-)

It's ok to be afraid

First of all, you should be aware that fear of loss, fear of abandonment and fear of failure are part of human nature, and even though some people are better then others in hiding them, we all have to deal with these unpleasant feelings every now and then.

That nasty nagging voice ...

So, you have been here for few weeks, and by now two things should have happened:

1. You found a niche you are passionate and knowledgeable about.
2. You know that if you patiently follow all the courses on WA, taking your time and not skipping lessons, someday you will be in the best position to make a profit out of your hard work.

And yet … you hear that nasty little voice inside your head telling you: “Hey, there are lots of blogs and articles out there about this subject. Look how well written they are, how ‘shining’ those websites are. Why would anybody care for what you have to say, with so much brilliant material already available”?

I’ve heard that voice over and over since I was a child, about various issues ... AND IT SUCKS! At first I’m always tempted to agree with it, and follow its advice, but growing older I learned that I can ALWAYS find arguments to reply, and make it shut up.

Let's fire our weapons...

Here I give you three valid points that you can use to prove that voice wrong:

1. It is indeed a GOOD THING that there is already information available about the products / services in the niche you have chosen. If nobody ever wrote about what aroused your interest, most likely it means that the world doesn’t care about it, which is not good for your business, is it?
2. YOU ARE YOU. Unless you deliberately decide to copy and paste other people’s work (in which case you would not be a member of WA, I assume), your article will ALWAYS be unique, because you are not just providing technical data about something, you are in fact COMMUNICATING WITH PEOPLE. Take this post as an example: I know there are some excellent articles already available in internet on how to cope with fear, but none of them can be identical to mine. Either the approach is different, or the choice of words, or the tone, or all of these. While I don’t mean to say that this tutorial is better than others, I can say with confidence that somebody will relate to it, and will find it useful even though he / she has read other stuff about this subject.
3. Last but not least: all those articles already out there have been written by PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU. Sure, now they have thousands of followers, they are respected and maybe even worshipped, but you can rest assured that when they started they had your same fears, doubts and anxieties. In other words, there is no reason why you could not reach their level of success, one day!

So, what shall I do next?

Now that you have quieted that annoying voice, please do yourself a huge favour, and stop wasting you time and energy comparing yourself to others. Actually there are just two things you need to focus on, in order to write a good article:

1. BE YOURSELF. No need to add anything on this.
2. Don’t look for perfection, but post your material when you have the impression it looks good IN A SPECIFIC MOMENT. When it comes to writing, perfection does not exist in absolute terms. Whatever you write, day by day you will always find a sentence that doesn’t sound right anymore, or a concept that you could have developed in a different way. If you feel tired when you have finished writing an article, don’t post it immediately but rather SLEEP ON IT. The next day, with a fresh mind, you can check it, make the necessary changes and then post … NO MORE REVISIONS.

Ok, that’s it. Nothing really new, I know, just some food for thought . Any comment is of course appreciated, even if you disagree with what I wrote ;-)

Ciao!