How to Overcome Fear of Standing Out at the Workplace

By Syed Balkhi

Standing out at the workplace can be intimidating, especially if you’re an introvert. However, overcoming this fear is essential if you want personal and professional growth.

When you stand out for your achievements or contributions, you often get validation from your colleagues and supervisors. This reinforces a strong and positive belief in your abilities. You become more assured in your capabilities and become more confident about yourself.

This confidence helps you take up more challenging tasks and responsibilities. As a result, you get to continuously work on your skills and grow as a professional. This is very important if you want to grow in your career and achieve leadership roles.

But for introverts, it’s not always as easy as said. If you’re one of them, this post is for you. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most effective ways to overcome your fear of standing out in the workplace.

4 Ways to Overcome Fear of Standing Out at Workplace

Standing out at the workplace doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have the spotlight on you. Rather, it’s about excelling in your role and making a positive impact on the company. 

Let’s look at how you can do that with these 4 easy tips.

1. Visualize Success

Visualizing success is a very powerful technique to overcome the fear of standing out in the workplace. It allows you to mentally rehearse how success feels like. This can drastically boost your self-confidence and help you overcome your fear.

You can start this process by first defining what success means to you. It can be about hosting a webinar, completing a challenging task, boosting conversions by X%, or anything for that matter.

Now create a mental image where you have accomplished this task. To make this process even more effective, imagine your office setting where your colleagues are present around you. Make this imagination as detailed as possible.

Visualize yourself getting positive feedback from your colleagues and superiors. Engage your senses and imagine the sound of the loud applause you’re receiving.

Now, experience the feeling of pride and satisfaction. You’ll instantly understand how confident it makes you feel.

2. Acknowledge And Celebrate Your Achievements

Celebrating your achievements is another very effective way of overcoming the fear of standing out at your workplace.

Doing this is important because it helps reinforce a positive self-image. Besides, it is also a great way to motivate yourself to continue striving for success.

So keep a record of your achievements. It doesn’t have to be something super significant. You can start with smaller achievements like completing a specific task before the set deadline, for example.

This will help you analyze the hard work you have put in to achieve this goal. It’ll help you acknowledge your effort and accept that this achievement has happened due to your perseverance, dedication, and skills.

Basically, to overcome your fear of standing out in your workplace you have to remind yourself of your worth and your abilities.

3. Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

The next step to overcoming the fear of standing out at the workplace is to step out of your comfort zone. Unless you do that, you won’t be able to overcome your fear.

Being outside of your comfort zone will help you boost your confidence and demonstrate your abilities. But for that, you first need to identify your comfort zone. Only then you’ll be able to step out of it.

For example, say you aren’t very comfortable hosting a virtual event. This means that to host the event you have to step out of your comfort zone. Unless you do that, you won’t know about your abilities even if you’re good at it.

So don’t hesitate to volunteer for new tasks outside of your comfort zone. It will only help you become a better and more confident professional.

4. Conquer The Fear of Failure

A lot of times, you don’t want to stand out because of the fear of failure. So instead of taking risks or proactively participating in tasks outside of your scope of work, you tend to hold back.

You do this because you aren’t sure how people will perceive you if you fail to meet their expectations. However, you need to understand that failure is not the end of things.

It provides valuable lessons that help you grow in the future. To overcome this fear of failure, you can start by setting realistic goals. Setting unrealistic goals will only continue to demotivate you.

But when you know that your goals are achievable you start feeling more confident and eventually overcome the fear of failure.

Conclusion

Standing out in your workplace can be thrilling, but for some, it can be intimidating too. However, as mentioned before, standing out doesn’t mean that you always have to be the showstopper. It can also mean being the best at what you’re responsible for.

So focus on bringing out the best in you to achieve this goal. You just need a bit of practice and the right mindset to get started.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

About the Author

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.