I haven’t started projects I was interested in, I’ve given up on ideas I was curious about, I haven’t taken risks I wanted to take, all because of fear of failure.
When I committed to a daily writing practice and publishing 100 articles in 100 days, I’d identified fear of failure as one of the key obstacles to my success. I grew up in post-communist Bulgaria where education (much like education in most parts of the world) was about knowing the right answers, knowing more than your classmates (but also being humble and not showing off; not being the tall poppy). Experimenting, speaking to discover not to deliver was not encouraged. Knowledge was what it was – something very definitive, static, stuck in the time the textbooks were written—and you either knew it or you didn’t. Most of our teachers didn’t know what they didn’t know and didn’t want to know what they didn’t know.
There were two requirements for self-expression in class, one explicit, one implicit – you had to raise your hand and you had to know the correct answer. And most often than not the answer was something you were expected to have found out in a textbook rather than in your own reserves and intellect.
Failure was fraud upon and shamed. So much so that it wasn’t something that you did, but something that you were. That sentiment ran through not just the educational system but society at large. Common cuss words, too, collapsed actions with being. People who lose are losers; people who fail are failures; people who win are winners. Mistakes were pointed out and there was a preventative aura about it, almost a humanitarian one—we were told what we did wrong so we could become more sophisticated beings.
Failure is an integral part of achievement
Nowadays failure is more and more considered as an intrinsic part of achievement, learning, evolution. “I have not failed,” said Thomas A. Edison, “I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Most progressive scientists, inventors, philosophers and authors see failure as inextricable, even essential part of accomplishment. Risk is the currency of adventure and expansion. Failure is the currency of growth, discovery, evolution. The more you’re willing to fail, the bigger failure you’re willing to risk, the more impact you may create.
In my own battle with fear of failure, I’ve found the following distinctions to be most impactful:
Failure is something you do, not something you are. The era of digitisation, freelancing, and productivity has increased our tendency to reduce ourselves to our activities and roles. Social media platforms encourage us to identify by our jobs, professions, activities. Curated identities are everywhere – and the constant exposure to them creates a pressure for us to think of ourselves in these terms. But to identify with our activities is to reduce ourselves to them. You’re someone who blogs rather than a blogger; someone who codes, rather than a programmer; someone who creates music rather than a musician.
Identifying with our actions gives us a sense of stability, distinctiveness, direction in the global marketplace. But identifications and labels are inherently restrictive. They misrepresent the complexity of who we are. You are more than the sum of your actions, traits, characteristics.
Being curious about failure, rather than judgemental
Depending on what we’re trying to achieve, normally there’d a few different outcomes we may consider as failure. In the case of trying to write 100 articles in 100 days, my definition of failure was:
- Failing to write the articles (a quantity problem).
- Not being sufficiently satisfied with the quality of the articles (a quality problem).
- Not getting any engagement from the community (a quality problem).
Once you define what failure looks like, you can examine which scenario triggers you most. Normally, one or two of them would be more anxiety-inducing than the rest. Once you know that, you can get even more curious and try to examine why.
In my case, writing articles of poor quality was the worst form of failure. Why? Because I was collapsing this with lack of ability. But ability is something that improves over time, and not necessarily in a linear way. And for that to happen, we need to be willing to produce the lower quality content. Moreover, often what we think will resonate most doesn’t, and what we fear is mediocre work strikes a chord.
The secret to overcoming fear of failure: being with it
When we want to overcome something unwanted, we normally try to get rid of it. When I was first reflecting on how to manage my fear of failure in the context of setting goals that I knew would trigger it multiple times a day, my thinking was around what I could do to not be afraid of failure. This, in the first few days of my experiment, only exacerbated the fear. Any milestone you decide to pursue with consistent work, you’ll have both good and bad days. This is the benefit of consistency—it’s the commitment to show up on the good days and on the bad days.
As the bad days accumulated my fear of failure grew. The more it grew, the more it was impacting my work, the more I wanted to get rid of it. in my mind, my success became contingent on not being afraid of failure.
But then I thought that rather than try to get rid of it, I’ll try to embrace it. I’ll try to be with it.
Our feelings are what they are. The suffering they cause comes not from the feelings themselves, but from our resistance to the feelings. Feelings are essentially pieces of information, cues. They’re our mind and body’s way of transmitting signals. I’m afraid, I’m uncomfortable, I’m scared. This is what fear of failure signals.
Our natural response to unpleasant feelings is resistance. We don’t want to be afraid, it doesn’t feel good. We don’t want to be angry. We don’t want to feel lonely. And so whenever these sensations manifest, we try to change how we feel. We judge ourselves for feeling whatever we’re feeling and the judgement adds another layer of discomfort on top of the discomfort we’re judging. So now, we’re not just uncomfortable cause we’re afraid, but also because we’re judging ourselves negatively for being afraid.
So rather than try to get rid of my fear of failure, I decided to embrace it. To allow it and honour it. To just accept it and allow myself to feel into the discomfort of it. I examined my body to see how it manifested physically. There was a sense of trepidation, vibration in my chest, tickling sensations along my arms, tightness in my throat, a general stiffness overall.
I observed it and I did so without an endgame. Not in order to get rid of it, not in order to prevent it, not in order to understand it – but just to see it for what it is. Sometimes it lessens its impact on me. Sometimes it doesn’t. And I try to be okay with both.