7 Low-Key Tips To Manage Seeing Others Succeed When You Aren’t

How to fight the fear of failure and find your way to success

It happens to me every day.

I wake up, turn on the notifications, and see hundreds of emails about successful people refilling my screen.

They want to tell me how they reached a 6-figures income and how I can do it too. But all I wish is to act like I don’t care.

For the rest of the day, my mood is ruined. I feel fearful because I may fail my project and all the people that believed in me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Sounds familiar?

The constant giving up

I am sure it happened to you too, at least once in your lifetime. You started a project, hopeful and naive, and you thought you would succeed. But after a few days, your plan didn’t advance, not even for an inch, and you started losing faith in it.

Not only that, but you get interested in similar projects to see how they are performing. And you discovered many other people telling you how they reached success way sooner. They worked for a while, and then they succeeded. But that cannot happen to you, can it? So you give up.

I made this mistake hundreds of times in my life until I finally learned my lesson.

People only show you what they need you to believe

Have you ever published a photo where you were crying in the corner of the room?

I don’t think so.

Have any of your friends do so?

Hardly.

But have you ever seen people smiling, being successful, and enjoying their life?

Nowadays, our social network accounts are full of those things. Happy times, smiling faces, big parties. But seeing others enjoying their life shouldn’t make you feel bad for yourself. On the contrary, you should be more motivated to keep going, seeking your dream life.

The problem here is that you observe others through the wrong eyes. Usually, you don’t know most of the people you follow, but you believe them as if you did. And not to be suspicious, but most of the time, everything they say isn’t worth a penny without proof.

Not necessarily because it is false, but because they aren’t showing you the entire success process. You are not witnessing the hidden fatigue, but only the unbelievable results, so there’s nothing that you can learn from it.

So you convince yourself that a person reached success in a couple of weeks, or months, even if they were working in the field for years.

You miss the struggle, the commitment, and the suffering. And even when they admit it took ages to reach that level, you prefer believing in people selling you the easy patch to your problems.

So here are 7 low-key tips on how to manage seeing others succeed when you aren’t.

7 low-key tips to manage seeing others succeed

1 — Control the need for instant gratification

Who doesn’t love instant gratification?

We all do.

We want to make money (soon), drive dynamic cars, have many friends, and reach success. And even if that hunger is healthy, our giving up tendency makes it useless.

If you don’t control your feelings and your need for instant gratification, there is no way you can reach success.

Success requires hard work and commitment. But if you give up on the first trial, you have already signed your contract with failure.

Many studies have shown how instant gratification makes people less resistant to adversities and more likely to fail. And defeating the fear of failure is a process of resisting difficulties and trying to focus your attention on long-term rewards and delayed gratification.

So if you want to resist seeing others succeed while you aren’t, start planning long-term rewards instead of short-term prizes.

2 — Isolate yourself only for productivity

Isolating yourself can be efficient for productivity but also extremely dangerous. If you do it for short periods, you will gain the ability to work with the strength of a thousand men. However, if you keep doing it frequently, your reality will deform, and you won’t be productive anymore.

Not only that. You will lose the ability to interact with people, talk to them, and convince them, which is the highest purpose of human interactions.

If you want your project to be successful, you need to talk with people. But if you are unable to do it, your chances of failing will grow. So isolate yourself for productivity only, or don’t do it at all.

3 — Work on your attitude

Attitude creates actions.

Actions create habits.

And habits forge your character.

If you want to manage seeing others succeed, you need to build the strength of character and self-esteem. So you should work on your attitude and make it as positive as you can.

Attitudes that easily give up also develop a habit of leaving projects incomplete because of weak character. However, if you commit to an always-positive attitude, your routines will break with more difficulty, and so will your character.

4 — Keep an eye on motivation

Motivation is the fire of our dreams. Without it, we will be lost. And even if sometimes we feel motivated and willing to do whatever is necessary, many times the flame vanishes with the same speed it ignited.

But you can regenerate motivation with ease if you learn how to use it.

The secret stays in not using too much of it and keeping your interest at high levels. Finish each productivity session with something you can’t wait to do, and you will never run out of motivation.

5 — Exercise leaving the comfort zone

Success requires risk, and risk requires leaving the comfort zone.

All our life, we have tried to remain in our comfort zone as much as possible. And it is not our fault — our body has been trained to act like this. The more comfortable our habits are, the better.

However, you can’t beat the fear of failing if you don’t risk it even once and test yourself with life adversities. So if you want to manage seeing others succeed, exercise leaving your comfort zone first.

6 — Have a backup plan

It would be a lot easier to try something new while having a backup plan in case something goes wrong.

Especially when you are at the beginning of the project, you need to take little steps and have a backup plan. This will make it easier to leave the comfort zone and try new things.

Also, your fear of failure will decrease if you have something else waiting for you. And when watching others succeed, you won’t feel too much pressure because you will have plenty of time to work with.

7 — Don’t overthink

Thinking more brings less action. But less work leads to fewer results. So if you want to reach success and obtain results, you need to stop overthinking.

This erosive activity not only makes you lose precious time you could spend doing something else. But it also makes you overprotect your project from failing, which removes a part of its raw power.

Furthermore, if you overthink, your fear of failure will grow instead of diminishing.

Rather than finding solutions to your problems, the analysis of the failing probabilities makes them even more fearsome. So you will find yourself searching for answers to hypothetical problems while losing track of the action you should take instead.

Final Thoughts

If you want to cope with seeing others succeed, you need to defeat the fear of failure. But this doesn’t exclude failing.

Fighting your fears won’t make you always defeat them. But at least you will learn to avoid them. And even if you manage to defeat one of your fears, this doesn’t mean whatever was frightening you could not happen again.

So if you want to manage to see others succeed, you need to start committing yourself to your project and your dreams. Control your need for gratification and become productive.

Build a positive attitude, keep an eye on your motivation levels, and exercise leaving your comfort zone. Also, to lower the power of the fear of failing, create a backup plan, and stop overthinking about the project.

Less thinking and more doing. These are the 7 low-key tips on how to manage seeing others succeed and how to become strong enough so you can do it too.

Article first published on Start It Up.

Cover photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.

Do you want other ways to support the blog? Subscribe to Medium through my referral link.