If you’re wanting to learn how to ditch the fear of failure and constant people-pleasing, this post is for you. I’m sharing my 3 steps to ridding yourself of the fear of failure and finally quitting people pleasing. 

Keep listening and you’ll walk away knowing:

• why you’re really a people disappointer

• how to build your confidence

• what the fear of failure is really keeping you from

You’ll learn that fear and failure will never go away, but building confidence can help prepare you for difficult situations. 

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3 Things Every Service Provider Should Know About Failure & People-Pleasing

Believe me, friend, I get it. I still struggle with people-pleasing and I still have an irrational fear of failing. 

But I’m here to tell you that it’s time to stop people pleasing and being so scared of failing. 

I wanna take the time to share some secrets that have helped me get out of those patterns that aren’t doing what I hoped they’d do. 

They’re not keeping me safe and they’re not making others happy. They’re actually sabotaging me. 

And I have a suspicion that you’re also struggling with that, so I wanna help you get over that as well. 

A People Disappointer

You might have heard me say this before, but I’m going to say it again:

You’re not a people pleaser, you’re a people disappointer. 

How often do we say “yes” to things in the beginning to avoid disappointing people and we end up disappointing people in the long run?

I’ll share this story with you about my ex who had a big truck. People would ask him to help them move because he had this super convenient truck and he would always reply with an enthusiastic “Yeah!”. 

Then he’d come home and be upset, telling me he doesn’t want to help them move because he was worried about them messing up his truck. 

So I asked him why he said yes in the first place then. He told me that he felt bad and felt obligated to say yes. 

He’d then wait until the day they were moving and he’d find an excuse for why he couldn’t help them. 

Can you imagine counting on someone that had said yes and then in that 11th hour they bail on you? Wouldn’t you rather they just said no in the first place?

Unrealistic Expectations

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve done this in my career. From black box-dyed clients wanting to go platinum to fine-haired clients showing me a picture with thick hair…

I never knew how to tell them that while we could do that color or that cut, it’s not going to look the same as someone with different hair. 

So instead I’d just default to a “yeah, for sure!” and then I go to the back and start praying to the color gods to take that black box dye to platinum blonde when it’s not even scientifically possible. 

And it came from a place of fearing people would think I was incompetent or not good enough. 

Instead of being honest with them, I would just try to appease them to create a predictable response from them and it got me into a really bad place. 

You see, I was so scared of failing and so scared of people thinking I was a failure, especially in the early days. 

The thought of messing up, especially when you’re new, can send you into a spiral of thinking people will never believe you’re good enough. 

As I’ve developed more confidence I’ve come to understand that this is simply a part of the job. I now can communicate realistic expectations to my clients and I can show up and do my best. But I can’t guarantee everything and it’s taken a really long time to get there. 

3 Ways To Stop Your People Pleasing & Fear of Failure

#1: Recognizing that your people pleasing isn’t about making other people happy, it’s about trying to control their response. 

You’re really trying to eliminate the risk of a volatile experience or a combative or confrontational experience. 

We people please for control. 

We don’t want them to respond badly or see you in a certain way. So we people please to try to have control over the situation. 

#2: Communicate in a way that elicits a compassionate response from people. 

You can say no to people. You can give people the bad news that you can’t do what they want you to.

And you can do it in a way that isn’t going to have them responding in a defensive way. 

You need to learn how to compassionately communicate to create a compassionate response. 

#3: Build your confidence by showing up with courage and vulnerability

Confidence doesn’t come with time. Confidence is a byproduct of being courageous and vulnerable. 

I want you to know that sometimes you’re going to make mistakes and to be vulnerable and open about that. Sometimes you’re going to need to build up that courage to ask a new client to come in or this, that, or, the other. 

There will be times when you’re going to need to be courageous and vulnerable and risk failure. 

There’s always going to be a risk. If you wait for the moment when the risk doesn’t exist or for a moment when there’s no fear you’ll be waiting forever and that confidence is never going to come. 

Because confidence comes from taking risks. By taking chances you build confidence. And I would almost say you build more confidence through failures than you do through successes. 

That fear of failure that you’re trying to avoid and sidestep is never going to go away and that’s actually a good thing! If you don’t have fear it shows you that you don’t care. If there isn’t fear, you won’t push forward with the same effort. 

So I want you to remember that when you’re thinking about the new year in your life, your business, how your family, friends, partner, kids, or clients treat you and you find yourself believing that “no one seems to respect me” and the only way to win people’s favor is to continue down this path of doing everything for them because it makes you feel valuable. 

If the thought of saying no to people and possibly losing friendships, relationships, or clients is debilitating. I want you to ask yourself if you have the support in place to help you push forward. 

Because there will be speed bumps, roadblocks, and detours that come up. 

And when you start to do the things you wanna do and go after the things you’ve always wanted to go after, and you start putting yourself first, people will kind of do a double-take and you need to be prepared for that. 

I want to remind you that you’re not meant to do it alone so stop thinking that you have to do it alone. You don’t need to prove it to yourself or to anyone else. 

It’s time to start putting yourself first and start building the life, business, and bank account that you’ve always dreamed of. 

If you’re ready to make 2023 your best year yet, join me for my FREE class on Sunday, January 12th at 12 pm MST all about mastering your finances (even if you’re not a numbers person). 

Hope to see ya there, friend. 

Let’s be besties?