Overcome your fear of failure and create the life you want
If we truly want to create a life worth being proud of, we have to overcome our fear of failure.
by: E.B. Johnson
No matter who you are, you’ve experienced failure at some point in your life. We can experience failure in our expectations, our goals and even our romantic lives. It’s a permeating sort of defeat that runs deep and strong, and it can happen to anyone at any point or stage of their lives or careers.
Failing is common, but it’s an experience that can invoke some deep-seated fears and insecurities that seriously undermine our happiness and wellbeing. When your fear of failure becomes so big that it starts holding you back from the things you want in life — there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed quickly.
The fear of failing.
Understanding our fear of failure is the only way to overcome it, but that takes understanding first what failure really is. Failure can look different to all of us, because we all have different benchmarks, value systems and beliefs. What is failure to one person isn’t always failure to another person, but we all experience it at one point or another in our lives.
Essentially, it’s coming up short on something that you want to accomplish, but the roots of this fear go so much deeper than that. Most of us are afraid of failing, but when that fear starts to hold us back from the things we want (“atychiphobia”) — it’s a problem. A problem which can only be overcome by deepening our understanding of ourselves and the things that both hold us back and propel us forward toward the future we want to create.
Where does our fear of failing come from?
Fear of failure can come from many deep-seated and complex places, not limited to the experiences of our past and the emotional issues that plague us. The two primary places this fear comes from, however, is our childhood experiences and the traumatic events that scar and shape us. When we realize this, it can often unlock a world of healing, but that on it’s own can be a complex process that takes time and commitment.
A critical childhood
Growing up under the thumb of one or more excessively critical caretakers can lead to a fear of failure that paralyzes us later on in life. Being regularly undermined or humiliated in childhood can lead to negative feelings that blossom into an anxiety that keeps you from the things you rightfully deserve.
Traumatic events
Traumatic experiences undermine our happiness in a number of ways, and they can manifest in a number of ways too; even months or years after the initial event. When we experience something terrible, it stamps itself on our memory and causes fears and anxieties that are meant to protect us from experiencing such a terrible thing again. The problem with this, however, is that it also holds us back from new opportunities, and the things that might otherwise bring us joy and happiness.
Signs you’re holding yourself back.
There are a number of signs that your fear of failure might be holding you back or negatively impacting your life. From self-sabotage to reluctance and isolation, there are a number of key ways this fear of failing might be manifesting in your life.
Self-sabotage
When we’re struggling or choking on fear, we sabotage ourselves and hold ourselves back from the things we think we don’t deserve. Self-sabotage can occur in a number of ways, including procrastination, excessive anxiety or even lashing out with mood swings that alienate the people you love most. It can also be indicated through a failure to follow through on tasks and goals.
Perfectionism
If you’re a perfectionist, it might be a sign that your fear of failing is holding you back. Perfectionists try only the things that they know they’re good at. This leads to missed opportunities and a failure to branch out, as well as a failure to develop new skills and perspectives.
Low self-esteem
Low self-esteem is one of the most common signs of a failure fears. Thinking little of ourselves creates the believe that we don’t deserve what we want, or that we’re not good enough to meet the demands of the things we desire. It’s commonly indicated through statements or thoughts like, “I’ll never be good enough for that,” or “I’m not smart enough to do this.”
Reluctance and isolation
Reluctance — more often than not — comes from a place of fear; as does isolation. Getting involved in challenging projects or tasks is good for us, as it pushes us toward new opportunties and helps us to develop our skills. When we’re overcome by fear of failure, however, we often refuse to try new things or meet new people, alienating ourselves from what might otherwise provide some happiness in this chaotic world.
How to overcome your fear of failure.
You can overcome your fear of failure, but it takes self-reflection and it takes a brutally honest look at who you are and what you value. This fear is real and visceral, and it can keep us stuck and chained to beliefs, behaviors and lifestyles that don’t serve who we truly are or what we truly want. Setting ourselves free takes work — hard work — and a commitment to accepting discomfort on behalf of finding freedom. It’s a trade that’s hard to make, but one that can transform our lives when we put in the effort and make the leap.
1. Get beyond visualization alone
Though we might all realize that visualization is a key part of success, our visualization techniques are nothing without action behind them. Creating the futures and environments we want takes actually getting our hands dirty and applying action to our desires. If you want to overcome your fear of failure you have to get past visualization alone and start putting effort behind your desires.
Studies conducted at the University of Hamburg and NYU indicated that relying on visualization when it comes to changing our lives can actually lead to lower effort and performance. That’s because these positive visualizations offer us an idealized version of our goals, or one in which costs are negligible and exertion is light — a devastatingly misleading lie to invest in.
Rather than leaning on the crutch of visualization, we have to learn how to combine reality and action with our dreams of a future. Use mental contrasting to weigh the obstacles ahead alongside your idealized dreams. Use this contrast to prepare yourself for the action that must be taken, despite your fear. Imagining something without action is just fantasizing. Hard work must balance our dreams, but that takes getting real an getting past our crippling fear of never being good enough to get what we want.
2. Answer the “what-ifs”
When we’re paralyzed by fear, our brain gets taken over by the “what-ifs”. These what-if’s can look and sound like anything, but they most often run along the lines of, “What if I fail this test?”; “What if no one ever loves me?”; “What if I never get that promotion?” It’s a lot of unnecessary stress and pressure, and it comes completely and entirely from within. If you want to get past your fear of failure, you have to take a leap off the cliff and start answering those what-ifs for yourself.
Start answering those nagging and terrifying questions that plague all the things you want from life. Sit down and list out every possible consequence (good and bad) and really think through what could realistically go right and what could realistically go wrong.
From there, work through what would happen if the best-case scenario occurred, and work through what would happen if the worst-case scenario occurred. Dig into both your strengths and your weakness and consider your support networks and the anchors in your life that keep you grounded and focused. Often, when we actually take the time to answer these terrible “what-is” we find that the reality of what could happen isn’t as bad as we think. We can also realize buried strengths and power to overcome that we didn’t know we had. Something which is invaluable when it comes to bolstering our confidence in self.
3. Learn how to focus on the process
Some of us are goal-oriented people and that’s great. It can become crippling, however, when we start to focus only on the goal ahead and forget to focus on the process. Goals drive us and help us create the futures that we want, but they’re not truly an indication of success of failure. The true measure of success of failure is what you learn along the way, but that’s something that can only be gleamed by leaning how to focus on the process, rather than the outcome.
Drop sight of that end-result and start getting present in the right-here and right-now. Look at your overall process and the lessons that it can offer you. By learning how to focus on the spaces between the endpoints, we can become masters of our skills and emotions, rather than just spectators. When you start to consider the journey, rather than just the arrival, your perspective of success and failure changes entirely.
Stop rushing and and allow yourself to get real and present where you’re at right now. Dig into the meat of how you’re feeling in this moment, and really dig into the strengths and core abilities that can help launch you forward toward the future that you want. The middle bits of the journey are the best bits of the journey, they’re the parts that offer us the most beautiful perspectives and opportunities for growth and transformation, but we have to lose sight of our goals and start focusing on where we’re at right now.
4. Be honest about what you’re afraid of
Perhaps the scariest part of getting past our fear of failure is getting honest about what we’re afraid of and facing those fears head-on. The only way past insecurity or fear is through it, but that takes a certain type of strength and self-confidence that takes a lot of focus and perseverance to cultivate.
Get really honest about what you’re actually afraid of. Question your fears and question how realistic they really are. When we really dig deep into the core of our insecurities and fears, we often find that they are more irrational or unrealistic than we initially thought. Get real about what you’re feeling and get real about how likely it is that everything will turn out as badly as you expect.
Start small, with the little fears and insecurities that plague you and work your way up. Some of the things that cause our fear of failure are deep-rooted, and can be linked to emotions and experiences that are complex or difficult to process. Take your time and dip your toe into fear-exploration slowly. Despite what you’re told, you have plenty of time. Go at your own pace and get really, brutally honest about what you’re afraid and what fears are holding you back.
5. Realize failure is temporary
Every single person we idolize — whether they be a titan of industry, or a star of stage and screen — suffered failure at some point in their life. We live under this illusion that success only happens to successful people and failure happens to losers, but that just isn’t true. Failure is a common experience, shared by all of us, and it’s a temporary state that passes like any other temporary state.
Though we see being a failure as something permanent, it simply isn’t. True and unconquerable failure is something reserved to rarity, occuring only to those who are truly evil (Weinstein) and those who are truly reckless (Enron). Rather than seeing failure as an all-encompassing state, we have to see it as the passing experience that it is 99.9% of the time. Everyone has failed at some point in their lives. The odds are in your favor. You get past it when you see it as an opportunity to reinvent, rather than the last stop on downward slope.
Practice this in reality by taking a step back to look at your past failures. Think back to when you were a kid and you made a mistake that you thought would mean “forever”. Consider that mistake now. Do you even remember it clearly? Does it make you laugh? Now compare it against those emotions you felt in that moment as a child — that intensity. See how drastically things have changed and realize that everything will change again. Nothing in this life is permanent, including failure. It’s a stopover on a big journey, it’s not the final destination. Unless you make it one.
6. Drop the shame game
Many of us fear failure because we fear the shame associated with such a devastating outcome. When we fail to do something we want, or we fail to accomplish something others want from us, it can cause us to feel shameful about ourselves or shameful about our skills and accomplishments. It’s an insecurity trigger, and one that can leave us feeling embarrassed and inadequate.
We have to overcome these fears and drop the shame game. Shame holds us back from things we deserve and causes us to deny ourselves opportunities that would otherwise lead to growth and transformation. Expose your shame to the light of truth and make new connections that allow you bolster your self-esteem and sense of power and self-possession. We aren’t the sum of our behaviors, we’re the sum of our experiences and that comes down to our authentic sense of self at play.
Recognizing triggers, too, is a critical part of the healing process. Learning how to identify our triggers allows us to exert greater control over both our environments and our emotions; no small feat when you’re coming back from trauma, loss or grief which removed your power from you. Getting past our fear of failure takes getting real, and learning how to eliminate the things that don’t serve our emotional health and wellbeing in the longterm.
7. Master your inner critic
Our inner critics are one of the number one causes of ongoing shame, fear of failure, and internalized guilt. When we allow our inner critic too much leeway , it can destroy our sense of self and our self-esteem in ways which make it easy for us to hate ourselves, and therefore easier for others to take advantage of us.
Ease off that inner critic and develop new ways to deal with all the biting critiques. Learn how to avoid the triggers that set him or her off and try to cultivate positive responses to her negative outbursts. You can do this by reframing your own world views and getting to the root of the childhood traumas and heartbreaks that led to such a virulent inner voice.
Judging others is stupid, but judging yourself is especially pointless. We are all humans and we all make mistakes. The sooner you realize that (and accept it) the happier you’ll be. Whatever you achieve, someone will achieve better. However bad you did, someone will do worse. Take no notice of your inner critic and start living your life in line what what you know is your authentic truth. If you want something to be different make it different, and start right now.
Putting it all together…
Fear of failure is a real and crippling fear that plagues our lives and keeps us stuck to things that don’t serve our longterm goals or wellbeing. When we’re so afraid of failing that it starts to interfere with our lives, it’s time to start getting honest and start getting to work on overcoming the obstacles we might rather avoid. If your fear of failure is holding you back, there are a number of ways it might manifest and undermine your happiness, but only you can get it back on track with a lot of hard work and a lot of self-reflection.
Learning to let go of our fear of failure takes getting beyond visualization, and it takes applying action to the dreams that line our futures. It also takes answering those “what-ifs” that keep us paralyzed by fear, and it takes learning how to focus on the journey rather than just the destination. Fear of failure is real, and it can truly undermine our happiness. You have to get honest about what you’re afraid of, honest about the possible outcomes, and you have to accept and realize that failure happens to everyone and it’s temporary. Drop the shame game and start addressing your fears and insecurities up front. You are smart and powerful enough to create the future that you want, but you’re the only one who can internalize that and take it on board as the gospel that can transform your life.
