I don’t know about you, but success has never been a thing that I have ever been scared of. The one thing I fear most is failure! I know I have amazing potential, yet I am afraid to share my dreams because of the voice in the back of my head that says ‘but what if you fail?’.

fear or failure How To Let The Fear Of Failure Drive You!If you are anything like me, you are very protective of your goals.

Maybe it is because I am pursuing a different path than that of the majority of my friends and family, but I rarely ever talking about my blogging or online business.

Now it’s not that I am afraid of being called a nerd. I’m passed that – in fact I am embracing it! I recently got some Clark Kent style glasses which might make an appearance when I get around to doing a video – so it definitely isn’t that. What I have come to realise is that I am afraid of not achieving my goals and having all my 8-5 friends say, ‘ I knew you couldn’t do it – just get a job!‘

NO FEAR = NO DRIVE

But the problem with no one knowing your goals is that you start to put everything on cruise control – and that is where I found myself over the last month!

I was just going about business like usual – but I had hit a plateau! And for me…. plateau’s are EVIL.

So here are the steps that I have taken to smash forward towards my main goal:

Of having a location independent family, funded by my online assets.

I hope that it will encourage you to let your own fear of failure push you higher!

Step 1: Set Specific Goals!

I am a massive believer in SMART goal setting and I knew that to get to a new level and to break free from this plateau, I needed some specific goals with a time limit!

So I sat down with my wife and said:

Let’s set my job exit criteria! What levels do I need to be at to start doing this full-time?

Here is what we set: (and this is where my fear of failure kicks in!)

  • To be making $,5000/month PROFIT
  • Online Income must be TRENDING UP
  • Have $10,000 in SAVINGS

Oh, and the time limit we set was JULY 2011!

Ok, so I am semi-comfortable with these goals – so time for step 2!

Step 2. Make Your Goals Uncomfortable!

The problem with comfortable goals is that most of the time they never get achieved! Because people start off thinking they have a heap of time to achieve them – so they don’t do anything. And then their time limit sneaks up on them and by then it is too late -and they fail.
That is why one of my all-time favourite quotes is:

“It is better to aim for the stars and hit the moon, than to aim for the trees, and hit the ground.”– Suzanne Oggenfuss

It is in our discomfort that we are spurred into action – and I don’t know if my wife knew that, but she has definitely made my goals a lot less comfortable. Let me explain.

We are only a newly married couple (14 months) and when we arrived back in Australia from 3 months in Canada (September last year), it just so happened that my parents were looking for a new place to rent at the same time we were -so to save money we found a big 5 bedroom house between us.

Just last month we signed another 6 month lease to end in March – with the goal of going our separate ways (my parents and us) at the end of the lease.

And my wife throws out an innocent suggestion…

Let’s go overseas  for 6 months from March – instead of waiting until July.

Now I know she was just thinking logically, because that would mean we wouldn’t have to try and find a short term rental lease , and don’t get me wrong – I love the idea! But cutting my goal by three months has definitely kicked me into gear!

Now our goals are the same as before, but now by March 2011!

Talk about a wake up call! But just in case that still wasn’t enough to drive me… here is step 3.

Step 3. Make Your Goals Public!

Setting SMART goals is great, making them uncomfortable is even better, but as soon as you release your goals into the public domain – man your productivity increases!

If you are feeling flat with where you currently are, then there is nothing like the fear of failure to kick you up the bum!

Where To From Here?

Obviously now that I am starting to get a large amount of drive, I need to channel that drive.

So I looked at my current projects and as you can see from my weekend discussion post, I am looking at making some changes to StandOutBlogger.

And as well as that, I am channeling a lot of my focus at the moment into a new project WebsiteBuildr – which is quickly taking shape (get ready for a big post about that one!)

Over To You?

Are you starting to hit a plateau with your online business?

Why not follow my lead and set some SMART goals, refine them to make them uncomfortable and then make them public!

Let the ‘fear of failure’ drive you a new level!