fear of failure Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

To Ensure Success, Financial Advisors Must Fight Through Mental Roadblocks and Self-Doubt

April 1, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Being a financial advisor can be an enriching career with both monetary and personal fulfillment. The price for such success is years of hard work, sacrifice, and overcoming extended bouts of mental roadblocks and self-doubt that can shatter one’s self-confidence and potentially derail a career.

These mental hurdles can manifest in various ways but are almost always a result of intentional or unintentional behavior that hinders your own success or well-being—in other words, self-sabotage. It’s like consciously or unconsciously throwing a wrench in your own engine by the actions you take, such as procrastination, negative self-talk, perfectionism, quitting tasks prematurely, and avoiding challenges.

It can also transpire through unhealthy mindsets such as fear of failure, fear of success, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, lack of confidence, and limiting beliefs.

Few careers are as demanding as being a financial advisor, which makes it imperative to avoid doing things that can make it more difficult. All these actions and mindsets are avoidable, but it takes a conscious effort to weed them out, using “emotional self-regulation” – a process of monitoring, evaluating, and modifying your behavior. Here’s how it works:

You Can’t Be Afraid to Fail. It’s How You Succeed.

March 20, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Who doesn’t want to be a success? It’s what people, particularly financial advisors, strive for every day. No one wants to be a failure. But did it ever occur to you that it’s virtually impossible to be a success without failing? Successful people must be very comfortable with failure because they probably fail more often than they succeed. They’re successful because they use their failures as learning experiences to propel them forward.

Yet, many people seem to have such a dysfunctional relationship with failure that they can’t see the value in it, choosing instead to avoid it by not taking the same risks that led to it. That’s not learning. That’s capitulation, which never leads to success.

Financial Advisors Sabotage Their Success Through Getting Ready to Get Ready

January 23, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

I’ve seen it dozens of times. Financial advisors sitting at their desks, looking busy, immersed in their work, shuffling papers, searching the internet, and reading reports. Sometimes it seems to go on for hours, even days, leaving me to wonder what they’re working towards. But one look at their production records tells the tale. There is a strong likelihood they’re working on getting ready to get ready to do what they know must be done but can’t seem to pull the trigger to get it done.

I’ve come across many advisors who consider themselves “perfectionists,” the type of people who feel the need to ensure everything is in order before attempting the task at hand, be it making calls to prospects, dealing with an irate client, or making a critical presentation to a wavering prospect. As we all know, “perfect is the enemy of the good,” which is good enough for most people.

If we wait until everything is ready before starting a task, we’ll probably never get started. Consider the analogy of a person starting their car and waiting in their driveway for all the lights on their route to turn green. They’ll probably never leave their driveway. Maybe that’s the point.

How to Stop Self-sabotaging Behaviors

August 5, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Behavior is said to be self-sabotaging when it creates problems and interferes with your life and goals. You may well be self-sabotaging without even realizing it.

There are many reasons you could be self-sabotaging – from holding dysfunctional beliefs to underestimating your abilities. If you don’t understand if and why you’re performing these types of actions, you will end up in a cycle of ever-increasing patterns of self-defeat. And these patterns are difficult to escape from.

Here are some common self-sabotaging behaviors you may be guilty of, with a look at why you may be doing them and how to stop.

4 Fears Prospecting Can Eliminate for You

January 1, 2018 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Prospecting is the backbone of your business. Nothing happens until you get yourself in front of potential clients – which is why the most successful advisors are generally those who regularly prospect right through their careers.

The more you prospect, the more proficient you will become and the more business you will secure. The act of prospecting also empowers you and helps you to overcome your fears.

Here are four such fears that prospecting can eliminate for you.

Don’t Compare Yourself to Others – Focus on Your Own Success

April 4, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Comparing yourself to other advisors and idealizing their qualities while underestimating your own abilities is a self-defeating habit, yet many advisors constantly do this. Believing that there are other advisors out there who are “better”, “more accomplished” or “more successful” than you can set you on a downward spiral because you feel you can’t measure up.

Not Following Up Is the Second Most Common Reason Advisors Get Fired

July 6, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

If you tell a client you will do something and then you don’t do it, you will sooner or later lose that client. Your dependability will be questioned.

Think how many times over the last six months people have told you they would do something and then failed to do it. If you do that same thing twice, even over a year or two, you will be deemed at first blush to be undependable.

That is a giant step toward being viewed as not trustworthy.

How Fear Can Cripple Your Financial Advisor Career

February 5, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Top advisors have fears. They don’t like facing rejection any more than average advisors do but they just accept their fears as part of the job. Here are some common fears that prevent good advisors from becoming great advisors, and some tips about how to face down your fears.