It’s Okay to Fail at Stuff

Why the most common fear is actually the best way forward…

What if this doesn’t work?

That’s the question that haunts my mind as I’m thinking about trying something new.

It’s a valid concern. Whether I’m writing a post for Medium, starting a YouTube channel, or writing a book, there’s a very real chance that this might not work.

This creates a powerful psychological incentive to stall. To procrastinate. To do anything but put work into the world that might get criticized or fail to achieve the goals that I had for it.

The fear of failure is a deeply emotional issue that holds most of us back.

To get over it, we need to get past the emotional side to let our better judgment win out. With that in mind, here are some key points about failure:

Failure is Inevitable

It is absolutely, positively inconceivable that you will go through life without failing at anything.

If it were possible you wouldn’t even be human, you’d be a god.

This means that you aren’t avoiding failure by stalling on your project. You’re just wasting time. If you don’t fail at what you are currently attempting you’ll fail at something else.

Failing to Try is Usually More Damaging Than Trying and Failing

This one is tricky, because you can ignore it forever.

There’s no way of knowing how much money you could be making if you had been more ambitious when applying for jobs or if you had started that side hustle. You have no real-world feedback indicating that you failed at all.

But you did. You failed to try. And chances are the sum total of your failures to try have cost you more in experiences and opportunities than all your visible failures.

This exposes a key point: you’re not really scared of failure, because you walk straight into it every time you shy away from an opportunity. What you’re really scared of is to be seen failing.

You’re scared of embarrassment.

This is related to having a bad mindset.

Think about it for a second: what could possibly be embarrassing about failure?

Well, if you have a “fixed” mindset, then you believe that your results even your early results are a reflection of your capabilities and potential. If you start a business and it fails, it’s a reflection of who you are. You just aren’t cut out for this sort of thing. Failure is an admission of weakness.

This misconception about failure leads to the third point:

Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success

How did you learn how to walk?

I’m being serious here, what did that learning process look like for you? Did you take your time, waiting until you could execute each move perfectly, or did you fall a lot?

Or how about another one: how did you learn how to speak?

Did you just refrain from saying anything until you had perfect syntax and pronunciation? Or did you just say things and let your parents and teachers correct you as you went?

By the way, I can tell you right now that you probably struggled with the “th” sound when you are a kid. As someone with the name “Matthew” I can tell you that all my friends called me “Mafew” in Kindergarten. Some were even doing it in the 1st grade.

So I guess you’re just not cut out for speaking English. You’ve demonstrated at least a hundred, if not a thousand, if not a hundred thousand times that you don’t have what it takes to even master the basics of the language.

You should give up on walking and give up speaking. The results are indisputable: you suck at both. Better give up before you embarrass yourself any further.

Of course, you and I both know that statement is utter nonsense. So why do we apply that very same logic to our present failures?

Here’s a better way to look at failure: failure represents a willingness to grow.

You have a certain zone of competence that represents things that you currently do well. The only reason you have it in the first place is because sometime in the past you were brave enough to step outside of your previous, smaller zone of competence. If you are careful not to do anything outside your zone of competence, your zone will never expand. If you venture outside your zone in attempt to push the boundary, the most likely result is experiencing some form of failure.

Failure is a stepping stone to success.

The key to being a good writer is to be a bad writer for as long as it takes to become a good one.

No One Really Cares About Your Failures

This point is ironic, because one of the things that holds us back from trying new things is this idea that everyone is watching us intently.

This statement isn’t completely accurate, but it’s much closer to the truth than the last one: no one cares what you are doing.

They mostly care about themselves.

Failure Fades, Success Sticks

Ironically, one of the best ways to not be viewed as a failure is to fail a lot.

This is because as we’ve seen, failure leads to success, and people tend to be much more interested in success.

One thing that I find interesting when listening to the stories of people who have become successful online influencers is that most of them have lots of failure stories. Either they started something online that didn’t work or the thing that eventually worked took a loooooong time and was a failure for years. They remember the failures, but no one else does, except in the context of their success story.

A big reason for this is that failure is common, but success is uncommon. It doesn’t shock us to learn that our heroes have failed, because everyone fails.

On the other hand , it impresses us to see our heroes succeed, because not everyone perseveres through failure long enough to reap a harvest.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways, failure does define you, just not the way that you have typically thought.

The absence of failure isn’t a sign of strength, but of stagnancy.

The presence of failure isn’t a sign of weakness but of progress.

All things being equal, you’d much rather succeed all the time. But “all things” are almost never equal. If you want the successes that matter, you’ll have too wade through a sea of failure to get there.

This is the fifteenth in a series based on my article 30 Lessons About Life You Should Learn Before Turning 30. Shoutout to Dr. Christine Bradstreet 🌴 for the idea to turn the post into an in-depth series.