Have you ever stopped to wonder how much of your self-worth is tied up in your fear of failure?
Choosing to reflect and to find the gifts is a powerful technique to make the hard things easy but even I, who advocates a daily mental fitness practice, had one of those hard moments recently.
I was spiralling because I’d set an unrealistic goal and, surprise, didn’t hit it. To snap me out of it, my mindset coach asked me a simple yet powerful question:
“How much of your self-worth is wrapped up in this?”
It stopped me in my tracks.
I sat down to journal—and in just five minutes, I felt lighter. I realised that while I was making it all feel impossibly hard, the reality was much simpler.
And that’s the thing about mindset: it’s a choice.
For a long time, I believed that if it didn’t feel hard, I wasn’t doing it right. “No pain, no gain,” I told myself. But that’s just a story we tell ourselves—a story we can rewrite.
Every day, you get to decide to make the hard things easy. Sure, business is tough. Life is tough. But only if you let it be. If you’re chasing big goals—and I know you are—then you know that the journey will have ups and downs.
Good days
Bad days
Everything in between.
Here’s the twist: how you respond to the hard days or weeks is entirely up to you.
Consider your big goals, be that advancing your career or growing your business, it might not feel fast, but when you move the needle by at least 1% a day; in a year that 365%.
Commit to showing up and you will do better and go further faster.
Reflect weekly and you’ll learn to listen to yourself, gain confidence in your judgement and meet your appropriate edge.
Do regular mindset work and reduce your fear of failure. You can train your brain to see progress and celebrate the wins as you learn and grow.
You’ll make mistakes (you can’t learn unless you do) and yes, sometime they are uncomfortable – even painful, but only for as long as you choose to let them be.
Ready to stop beating yourself up?
Discover that you too can make the hard moments feel lighter, even easy.
Here’s how:
Choose to find the gift.
- The gift of empathy – For yourself and the situation; What was out of your control? What was within your control?
- The gift of knowledge – What did you learn? What is clear to you now that wasn’t before?
- The gift of power- What has this strengthened, developed and improved?
Sometimes the gift takes time to become clear but by doing this simple reflection when you feel the familiar fears, stresses and strains, you build the mental muscle to recover from setbacks fast.
Find the gifts in what you’re doing and the destination will take care of itself.
If you want more actionable inspiration delivered straight to you so you can perform at the edge of your abilities and find solutions at pace.
Join my weekly newsletter: THE BURST. Sign up here.
