Fear of making a mistake prompts us to avoid going all the way to our dream for fear that what we held as our dream might turn out to disappoint us.

If you have nibbled around the edges of a dream but stopped short of going all out to pursue it, check out what one of my mentoring clients said to me recently:

"What if  I finally go ahead and take the plunge, and it turns out not to be as big a deal as I thought it would be? What if what I've been putting off all this time disappoints me, and it all turns out to be a big mistake?"

If that concern sounds familiar, you probably experience complicated feelings that can be major obstacles to success. Fears that you might be wrong about how much your dream really means to you, often engender a distracting internal back and forth.

And if you have skirted the confrontation with what is real, especially by taking paths other than your real calling, you may have other fears. These include that after all this time you could be hugely disappointed to discover that what you held dear turns out to be not all that.

So how do you do end this fear and move beyond it? For starters, it helps to understand how this fear may have developed in the first place.

Often fear of making a mistake grows out of a combination of the following factors. 

1. You have multiple talents, interests and curiosities and did not early on, settle on one.
2. Others, perhaps parents, relatives or significant others, in the vacuum of seeing you make a definitive decision have directly or indirectly suggested what they think would be good choices for you.
3. You are a person with a tendency to want to please.
4. You are temperamentally adaptable and flexible.
5. You tend to be at least mildly distractible.

Can you see how easily these factors could lead to the hesitancy to settle into a path and pursue it to closure?  And how also if you had a particular longing that you expressed and others did not endorse, that this could have led to your deciding not to rock the boat? Do you see the relationship to both fear of failure and fear of success?

The intensity of the feelings of fear is usually then a consequence of how long you postponed going for what you wanted and how many times you have settled for something that was not really of great interest or satisfaction but rather something you could tolerate. The longer this goes on, the more easy it is to draw the specious conclusion that the problem is you—that you are frivolous or lacking in seriousness of purpose. 

Here is what to do:

1. Decide that it is all right not to have just one dream thing that has to be the RIGHT THING forever and always.
2. And then move toward the thing that has secretly attracted you and enjoy allowing yourself to experience it fully. Commit while simultaneously understanding that you may move on to yet something else. You may discover that what seemed a calling actually is one. 
3. Accept, however, that having multiple talents and interests may mean your life has a different caste than those who have a narrower set of possibilities and less flexible temperament and style.
4. Decide that committing to a path is never a mistake if you do it in a reasoned way.

Here is what not to do:  

Do not decide not to go for it because you might be disappointed. No disappointment or failure is as acutely painful as the regret you will feel for not deeply committing to something that draws you. And beyond that is self-hatred. Don't go there. Instead, follow your heart's yearnings, in spite of what you think will please others.