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Damning the Results: Not Letting the Fear of Failure Paralyze You

Jacquelynn Lyon
6 min readJan 9, 2020

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Happy New Year! It’s nine days into 2020 and I have already been rejected by two literary magazines and none of my stories have been accepted anywhere. Since I have been rejected I have sent off five more stories to various paying markets for poetry and fiction. And I might be rejected by those ones too!

Let’s talk about failure. Let’s talk about coming up short. Let’s talk about all the little pricks to our egos that can lay us flat on the floor sobbing into the carpet.

We’re only human and some of our base instincts are: avoid things that hurt, don’t do things that make you actively upset, stick to safety, pet dog, run up stairs on all fours, sing poorly in the shower, ect.

“LOOK AT THIS DOG. THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WRITING.”

It’s alright to be afraid. It’s alright to be upset by rejection. The question is how do you keep going and not let it stop you from trying at all. Here are a few tips to help improve your motivation and triumph over fear itself.

  1. Change your mindset: Results are not metaphors

People have a tendency to blow up their results into being more significant than they are.

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Jacquelynn Lyon
Jacquelynn Lyon

Written by Jacquelynn Lyon

I am a novel editor working for the company of Dot and Dash, LLC. I also have a published book out now! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GY1S1CD?ref_=pe_3052080_276

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