Do you ever feel like you’re right on the edge of something big?

Like you’re about to take a leap that could potentially change your entire life, but right when you’re about to take that first step, fear starts to kick in? And suddenly, the only thing that you can think about is what might happen if you fail.

I have felt this so many times in my life that I have lost count at this point.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a pretty ambitious person, fantasizing about what might happen if I dove into the unknown. But the fear of failure has been with me every step of the way.

I didn’t really pay much attention to it, though. Why? Because I was okay with having nothing. If things didn’t work out, I understood that the worst thing that could happen is I would have to live in my car or camp out in a tent for a little while. I go camping for fun, so who cares?

I suppose this is one of the benefits of growing up lower class — I already knew what it was like to have the bare minimum, and it’s really not that big of a deal.

All of this changed when my daughter was born. It wasn’t just about me anymore. If I failed, it wouldn’t just affect my life, it would affect hers as well. 

As a parent, you want to give your kid the best life possible; so, the fear and the weight of responsibility really hit me hard. It still does, even to this day.‍

That worry pushed me to make sure that I wouldn’t fail; not necessarily because I was scared, but because I realized something extremely important.

Fear will always be there. It’s never going to go away. But my fear—the one that really got to me and kept me awake at night—was the idea of that I’d look back one day and regret not going all-in with my life. 

Regret, to me, is far worse than failure. I can always recover from failure, but it’s a lot harder to fix regret.

So, if you’re feeling that fear right now, I want you to know that you’re not alone. 

Maybe you’re afraid of failing at your job, your fitness goals, or even in your relationships. We’ve all been there, and it’s a really heavy emotion to carry around with you.

Fear makes you second guess yourself. It makes you hesitate, and it can stop you from going after the things that you really want in life.

But here’s the truth: Fear doesn’t have to hold you back. It can be a catalyst that pushes you forward. 

Once you stop running from fear, once you realize that failure is just part of the process of becoming, you start to see things a lot differently.‍

In this article, we’re going to:

• Break down how to take fear of failure and use it as a weapon for growth
• Talk about what’s really at stake when you let fear control your actions 
• Learn how to change the narrative so you can take charge of your life

Here’s what I want you to understand: it’s not about avoiding failure. It’s about moving through them and becoming stronger because of them. 

By the end of this, you’re going to have the tools and mindset you need to face that fear and start making some solid progress, no matter what’s holding you back right now.‍

What Happens When Fear of Failure Takes Control?

Fear is not just some random idea that pops into your head; it’s a weight that can drag you down into your own personal hell.

Maybe you have felt it when you’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and you start to play out every possible way that things COULD go wrong.

You start thinking, “What if I don’t make it? What if I’m not good enough?” And suddenly, one or two thoughts turn into a storm that is hard to stop, and you begin to drown in it. Trust me, I have been there as well. 

Fear of failure has a way of sneaking into everything. 

It showed up when I thought about quitting my job and going all-in on Norse. It was there when I opened the gym, and again when I started making supplements and other products. There’s even a hint of it here right now while I’m writing this article.‍

‍ And the more that you listen to it, the more you start to believe it because you’re giving it attention—and where your attention goes, energy flows.

The hardest part isn’t that fear makes you hesitate, it’s that fear always finds a way to spread like a plague in your mind. 

For me, it was the countless nights when I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I couldn’t turn off my thoughts. My mind was racing, coming up with every possible scenario where things might fall apart.

All of that really starts to take its toll, and it builds up in the form of stress and anxiety. You feel it in your body, in your focus, and pretty much every aspect of your life.

For a lot of people, fear of failure shows up in ways they don’t usually realize at first. 

Maybe it’s in your career. Perhaps you want to pursue a different more fulfilling path, but you’re worried about leaving your nice blanket of security.

Maybe it’s with your health and fitness. You’ve got big goals, but you hesitate to push yourself harder because you’re afraid that you don’t have what it takes to succeed. 

Or maybe it’s in your relationship. You hold off asking out that one girl OR ending things with your current partner who is toxic as hell.

Whatever it is, I want you to understand something important:  fear is irrational. It’s part of our DNA from back in the day when failure meant real danger for our ancestors—like life or death.‍

‍But we think that it will because we haven’t learned how to detach from it and observe it from a more realistic perspective—that’s the real problem here.

We blow up the entire situation in our minds and convince ourselves that failing means we’re not good enough or that we will never be able to recover. But the reality is that most of the time, the consequences of failure aren’t nearly as bad as we like to imagine. 

Humans have a phenomenal imagination. It can be our biggest curse or biggest blessing, depending on if you’ve learned how to use it properly.

The real issue isn’t fear itself. The issue is when we let fear take control of us and dictate our lives.

You can’t allow fear to paralyze you and stop you from taking the risks that will lead to the life you truly want. The longer that you avoid taking action, the more you run the risk of it turning into a habit. 

Yes, avoiding difficulty out of fear of failure can absolutely become a habit. It will turn into regret, and that will eat away at you for the rest of your life.

Instead of spending your final days thinking about all your conquests, you will be beating yourself up and wishing you would have taken more risks.

When I look back on my own life, I think about all the times that I almost let fear win. What scares me the most isn’t the idea of failing, it’s the thought of living a life filled with missed opportunities, a life where I played it safe. That is absolutely terrifying to me.

Now, you might be facing that same kind of fear right now. The pain of letting fear control you is very real—I know it all too well. It completely limits your progress, your growth, and your potential.

But I promise you, regret is far worse than failure. Think about it for a second. If you fail, you can always pick yourself back up, learn, adjust, and keep moving forward.

Regret, on the other hand, sticks with you like a massive splinter in your head. It’s the pain that lingers when you realize that you never even gave yourself a chance, you never found out what could have been if you pursued a different path.

What is fear costing you? How many opportunities are you missing out on because of it? And most importantly, how long are you going to continue to let it control you?

Fear doesn’t just disappear on its own. It grows. The longer that you avoid confronting it, the stronger it’s going to get. It will continue to show up, again and again in every area of your life, until it completely cripples you.‍

How to Stop Fearing Failure‍

But fear isn’t as powerful as it seems. It only has the power that you give it. 

Once you stop running from it and start facing it head-on, you’re going to realize that the majority of your fears are nothing more than illusions, especially fear of failure. It’s the primitive part of your brain going ape shit over a potential danger that isn’t there.

What if failure isn’t something to fear at all? What if, instead of running from it, failure becomes the very tool that you need to grow and become the person you have always wanted to be? Here’s the truth: ‍

‍It took me years to understand this concept, and it wasn’t easy. Every time I set my eyes on a new endeavor, that fear of failing would come back at full force. 

But once I was able to stop seeing failure as something to be afraid of and started seeing it as a necessary step toward victory, everything changed.

Steven Pressfield talks about this concept in his phenomenal book The War of Art. He calls it Resistance—that force inside of us that pushes back whenever we try to grow and push past our limits. Here’s the key takeaway: 

Resistance shows up the strongest when we’re on the verge of something triumphant.

Your fear is a sign that you’re exactly where you need to be, and you need to push forward with everything that you’ve got until you get to the other side.

The more I dove into this idea regarding my own life, the more I realized that fear was my ego trying to protect itself. My ego was trying to hold on to its current identity, trying to keep everything the same — because that it’s job.

How do you push through fear?

Stay persistent. Keep swinging that sledge hammer against the wall until you finally break through.

Keep the mental image of your ideal self in your mind’s eye during this phase — it’s like fuel for your internal fire.

You’ll realize over time that failure is part of the process of becoming. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more that you learn, the closer you get to figuring out what works. 

The only way to acquire mastery is through failure.

As John C Maxwell likes to put it: “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward”

You see, those who reach the highest levels of success aren’t the ones who avoid failure— they’re the ones who fail the most and learn from it every single time.

Think about the people you look up to. Do you think they just got to where they are now by never failing? Of course not. 

They got there because they continued to show up. They kept putting in the reps. They found a way to learn from their mistakes, and they continued to move forward. They didn’t play the victim and let failure stop them—they pushed through.

For me, that shift in perspective came from the realization that I wasn’t one of those people who just naturally excelled at things right out of the gate. I was never the guy who was able to pick something up and instantly be good at it. 

Everything, and I mean absolutely everything, has been an uphill battle for me. I have had to fail over and over and over again before I got anywhere close to “success,” whatever that even means.

But here’s something else I’ve realized, especially here lately:  Because I have had to work extremely hard, fail over and over again, and learn from my mistakes, I have been able to stay in the game longer. I have ended up surpassing a lot of people in the same industry. ‍

‍I truly believe that I can achieve absolutely anything that I put my mind to — and I want you to realize the same thing for yourself.

When you can embrace failure as part of the process, you’re going to develop resilience. Resilience is the trait that will carry you through when others give up. They don’t have it because they never had to acquire it.

I think the biggest misconception about failure is that it defines who you are as an individual. That is a lie. Failure doesn’t define who you are; how you respond to it does.

Every time that you fail, you’re given a choice. You can either let it defeat you and keep you stuck at the bottom; or you can get back up, learn from it, and come back stronger every single time.

You will come back better and stronger once you see failure as an opportunity for growth. When this happens, everything will change for you. 

It’s like flipping a switch. Suddenly, that fear of failure isn’t so terrifying anymore and it can no longer keep you chained to a life of mediocrity.

Here’s the truth: If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. You’re staying in your current realm of comfort, and comfort is the enemy of growth.

The more you fail, the more you grow. The more that you grow, the closer you get to the life that you’re truly capable of living.

I want you to think about it like this: Failure burns away what doesn’t work and what isn’t serving you, leaving the parts of you that are strong and pure.

Every failure is just another chance to get rid of what’s holding you back, to shift your focus toward what’s going to propel you forward. Failure the refining process that turns iron into steel. Failure is what turns you into the best version of yourself.

Reaction to failure is what separates champions from the rest. It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s the willingness to fail, to learn, and to keep moving forward.

So, here’s my challenge for you: 

Can you shift your perspective and start seeing failure as a crucial factor for growth? 

Can you begin to see failure as a sign that you’re pushing yourself to new heights and testing your limits?

When you’re able to stop fearing failure and start using it as a tool, you will become unstoppable. 

Nothing can hold you back when you’re no longer afraid of failing. That’s when you will start making some real progress. That’s when you’ll become the hero of your own saga.

The Plan of Attack

It’s not enough to simply understand that failure is just part of the process, you also need to know how to take action. You need a plan of attack. You have to build the right kind of discipline and habits that will keep you moving forward, even when fear tries to get your way.‍

Step One: Acknowledge the Resistance

The first step is simple, but it’s actually really damn powerful: acknowledge the resistance.

Fear and hesitation are real. They serve a purpose, but not the purpose that you think. And the more that you try to ignore fear, the more power it’s going to have over your life. It’s like a shadow that gets bigger when you turn away from it.

Bring this fear into the light. Get specific and really figure out what you are afraid of. What’s actually keeping you from taking that next step? 

Write it down. Say it out loud. Put it out there in the open where you can see it clearly. 

When you can identify the root cause of your fear, it stops being this huge vague issue and it becomes something that you can actually work with and overcome.

When you get specific about your fear, you’re going to realize that it’s not as big of a deal as you thought. 

Most fear is based on things that are unlikely to happen. And even if they do happen, they’re likely situations that you’ll be able to recover from fairly quickly.

So, instead of letting that fear build up in your mind and put shackles on your potential, get clear on exactly what the fear is so you can start dealing with it. 

Step Two: Commit to Showing Up

The next step is: Commit to showing up and taking action. This is where discipline comes into play, which shouldn’t be a surprise because discipline is literally the foundation of all self-improvement.

There’s something important that you need to understand: Fear will never fully go away. 

It’s something that everyone deals with. If someone wants to pretend that they don’t have any fear, I want you to realize that they are full of shit.

So, it’s not a matter of reaching a point where you will feel 100% ready and motivated to take action. That day will probably never come, and that is exactly why discipline is so important. 

Motivation is not dependable because it’s an emotion, and just like every other emotion, it’s out of your control and fleeting. Discipline, on the other hand, is constant and within your control.

Discipline is what gets you out of bed in the morning when you don’t want to face the world. 

Discipline is what keeps you going when every fiber of your being wants to quit. 

Discipline is choosing long-term growth and doing what’s best for you despite fear and discomfort.

But let me make this clear before we go any further: Discipline isn’t about perfection. It’s about consistency. It’s about showing up, even when you don’t feel like it or when you’re worried about a future outcome.

Discipline is extremely important in regard to overcoming the fear of failure because every time you stay disciplined and push past discomfort, you are building resilience.

You are training your body and mind to break through that initial resistance. Over time, that pain in the ass resistance gets weaker because you have built the habit of following through no matter what.

In order to master discipline, you need to build healthy habits. Habits are what shape your identity, which shapes your reality. 

When you build the right habits, they will carry you through the tough times because they have the potential to build you into your strongest self.

When it comes to building better habits, you don’t need to go over the top. As a matter of fact, you need to start off small so you will actually stick to the new habits.

Maybe your new habits are going to the gym 4 days per week, reading 10 pages of a book every day, or following a certain meal plan.

It doesn’t really matter what your new healthy habit is, the point is that you’re creating the habit of stacking victories and taking action. 

You’re rewiring your brain to associate success with showing up and taking a step forward, even if it’s a small one. 

Small steps will eventually get you to the top of the mountain.

And here’s the best part: The more consistent you can be with building these small habits, the more they are going to compound over time. 

And that’s the key here: progress builds over time, not overnight. This is why most people give up on their goals. They want instant gratification and they aren’t patient enough to see things through to the end.

The small actions that you take every day will always lead you to a triumphant victory, you just have to get out of your own way and push past the fear and hesitation.‍

Step Three: Set Micro-Goals

When it comes to pursuing the goals that you’ve been putting off, I encourage you to focus on micro-goals that will lead you to your main objective.If you’re only thinking about the end result, you’re going to get overwhelmed. That’s when the fear of failure can really start to get the best of you.

You can avoid that by breaking your big goal into smaller, more actionable steps so it becomes more manageable.

Instead of thinking, “I need to accomplish this big goal right now,” just focus on the next step that you need to take. 

You can ask always yourself: What’s the one thing I can do today that will move me closer to my main objective? 

Then focus on taking action on that one thing, then move onto to the next until you finally reach the destination.

Once you’ve accomplished one of those micro-goals, make sure you celebrate that victory! 

Acknowledge your progress, because success builds confidence. The more confident you feel, the less power that fear will have over you. 

You will never feel confident unless you are taking action and putting in the reps.

Step Four: Detach from the Outcome

Now, this next piece is probably the hardest for most people: You need to completely detach from the outcome. 

It’s easy to get caught up in whether you’re going to fail or succeed, and that’s what will stop you from taking action. 

But here’s the truth: you can’t control the outcome. You can’t guarantee success. The only thing you do have 100% control over is your effort.

So, don’t get all held up on whether you’re going to win or lose, it really doesn’t matter. Just focus on putting in the work, because that’s what’s going to ignite change in your life. That change is what you’re actually going after by pursuing any new goal for yourself, isn’t it?

I also want to clarify that detaching from the outcome doesn’t mean that you don’t care, it just means you’re no longer going to be paralyzed by the fear of things not going your way. You’re going to focus on what’s actually within your control. When you can do that, you free yourself from the pressure that fear creates.

Step Five: Take Action in Spite of Fear

The final and most important step: Take action in spite of fear. 

You need to explore the unknown regardless of all the anxiety it creates. 

Fear isn’t going anywhere, it’s a natural emotion. Accept that it’s always going to be there in one way or another, especially when you’re pursuing something that is extremely outside of your current comfort zone.

But the good news is that you don’t need fear to magically disappear in order to take action. The secret is to act in spite of it, and to use fear as an indicator that you’re on the right path.

Every time that you act and move forward, even when you’re worried, you’re strengthening your character. Think of it like building a muscle while training: the more you do it, the stronger you get and the more resilient you will become.

Over time, you start to realize that fear doesn’t control you anymore. The more action you take, the more fear loses its grip on your life.

So, stop waiting for the fear to disappear, because that’s not going to happen. 

Stop waiting for the perfect moment, because that doesn’t exist. Just start moving forward now, one step at a time. 

Acknowledge the resistance, commit to showing up, set micro-goals, detach from the outcome, and start taking action in spite of fear.

This is how you build resilience and create a triumphant life for yourself. This is how you train your body and mind to push through when it things start to get tough. 

Fear is always going to be there, but with the right habits and discipline, you’ll build yourself into someone who can handle it.