Want to Succeed? Learn How to Give Yourself Permission to Fail
It’s fear of shame, not fear of failure, that stops you
Imagine this. You’re alone in your house, all the blinds are drawn, and you get ready to try something. You just saw a cool dance move on tv, and want to know if you can do it. So you give it a try. Your feet get tangled up in each other and you go sprawling on the floor.
Picking yourself up, you laugh. The answer is definitely no. You’re no dancer.
Now imagine you’re at a party. One of your friends rolls out that smooth move on the dance floor, and offers to teach it to anyone who wants to learn.
“No, thank you,” you say. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
What changed between those two scenarios? Whether anyone would see you fail.
As humans, we’re not afraid of failing. We don’t like it, because we like to be competent. But we understand that we’ll probably fail the first time we try something. And it’s only by being bad at something that we get better.
What we are afraid of is having others see us fail. Of looking bad in front of our friends, family, and peers.
That fear is enough to have us refusing to try. We never learn to get good at something, because we are never willing to look bad.
If you are unwilling to try new things, you will slowly become smaller and smaller. Eventually, you’ll be a shriveled husk, as the things you know how to do become irrelevent.
There are two ways that you can combat this, to try new things and grow. The first is to change your environment, and the second is to change your framing.
Change your environment
According to shame researcher Brene Brown, shame and disengagement permeate our culture. In her book, Daring Greatly, she identifies the signposts of shame and disengagement.
A culture suffers from shame when:
- Belittling and ridicule are used to keep people in line
- Self-worth is tied to achievement, productivity, and/or compliance
- Blaming and finger-pointing are normal behaviors
- So are put-downs and name-calling
- Favoritism and perfectionism are issues
A culture suffers from disengagement when:
- People are afraid to take risks and try new things
- It is easier to keep quiet than to share honestly
- No one seems to pay attention or listen
- Everyone struggles to be seen and heard
In an environment with shame and disengagement, there is little growth or experimentation. The cost of being seen to fail is too great.
You can free yourself from this corrosive pressure to conform. Change your environment.
Is the problem a boss who uses bullying, humiliation, and shaming as a management style? You might be able to transfer to another department.
While it’s nice to think reporting a manager’s bad behavior to HR would change things, it’s not likely. The Workplace Bullying Institute claims about 37% of US workers felt bullied at work. When reported, slightly more than 50% of employers did something about the situation. Which means nearly half of the employers did nothing.
If your problem goes beyond your immediate boss to the corporate policy, you may need to find a new job. There’s a silver lining when people begin jumping ship like this. You can often find coworkers at new companies willing to put in a good word for you. And those companies are eager to pick up good workers who have been treated badly.
Change your framing
Another reason we may be unwilling to try things is that we have an internal image of ourselves as experts. Experts, so we think, don’t fail.
All you have to do to debunk that myth is to look at sports stars. The best athletes, the ones who are paid millions of dollars each year, regularly fail.
A poll of US sports fans named the best athletes of all time. #1 was boxer Mohammed Ali, who lost 5 times, including being knocked out once. #2, basketballer Michael Jordan, missed 16.2% of his freethrow shots. #3, basketballer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, missed 26% of his freethrow shots. They all failed, and they’re the best.
As hockey legend Wayne Gretzki said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Stop thinking that you have to do everything perfectly to be successful. Change your framing so that you measure your overall ratio of successes to failures. Or consider that your first attempt will most likely fail, and that’s okay. You only count your final attempt.
Creative artists tend to use the multiple-attempt framing. For example, it’s rare that a published book contains the author’s first attempt at writing it. First the author edits and rewrites. Then their publisher puts it through different levels of editing. Then it’s sent to prereviewers, who may flag different parts of the book for fixing. What the reader sees has probably been edited at least 5 times, and sometimes as many as 20.
Because they understand this process, writers give themselves permission to fail. They are willing to write bad first drafts, because they know they’ll go back and clean it up later.
If you reframe your process so that failure is the first part of success, you’ll be more willing to fail. That will help you try new things or crazy ideas, which will ultimately lead to more success.
Conclusion
If you want to succeed more, you need to give yourself permission to fail.
What we’re afraid of is not failing. We’re afraid of people seeing us fail, and making fun of us.
There are two ways to get more comfortable with failing. The first is to leave any enviroments that cultivate shame and disengagement. The second is to reframe your process, so that failure is seen a the first step toward success.
Once you’re more comfortable with failing, you’ll try more, and fail more. But ultimately, you’ll succeed more.
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a guide to help you increase your confidence and improve your life. If you follow these tips, you will level up your life very quickly!
