Does fearing failure paralyze you? Of all the reasons for inaction, the strongest one is not lack of ideas, tools, time or money. Usually, the enemy is entrenched much deeper inside our minds. Unless we learn to tackle our fear of failure, we’ll never be able to get the most out of our lives.
In this first article of a two-part series, the focus is on how to create a first line of defense — a “psychological armor” — against fear of failure. Here are 6 ideas to help you look at failure from a different perspective and stop being held back by it.
1. Failures are just steppingstones
“There is no failure. Only feedback.” –Robert Allen
We give too much importance to failure, don’t we? We overemphasize it, seeing failure as the final result — as an undesired outcome of something we fought hard for. We miss the point, though, that failure is just part of a larger process — the process of learning and growing.
Have you noticed that some people — contrary to all expectations — seem to only become stronger when they fail? How do they manage?
If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that they have developed a unique mindset: they realize that failing is an intrinsic part of succeeding. They know that every time they fail, they’re learning from their mistakes. A failure is a message that says that something could have been done differently — that there is room for improvement. And that’s why these people don’t seem to care much about failing: they never see the failure as an isolated event — but as part of a much larger process.
In life, failures are not end points: they’re steppingstones. They’re only as permanent as you allow them to be. They’re only final if you accept defeat and stop trying.
2. We can never be a failure
“Failure is an event, never a person.” – William D. Brown
At school we are ridiculed as we fail. As we grow older, the ridicule may become subtler, but it’s always present. That’s one reason fear of failure is so strong in us: failing undermines how we are recognized, accepted and validated by others.
For a long time, we’ve been conditioned to attach our sense of self-worth to the outcome of our actions. Every time one of our ideas fails, it is as though we allow our self-esteem to be eroded. We feel the failure deep inside: it’s almost like we were that idea that flopped.
But you don’t need to think that way. If something you try doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean you are a failure or a loser. It just means you’re actively experimenting, that you’re trying, and you’re learning as a result. In that regard, the expression to be a failure (or successful) doesn’t make any sense.
If people around you don’t get that and are still critical of you or your failures, it’s probably because they are the ones who do not get the idea about experimenting, trying, and learning. But don’t let yourself down by their negativity. As long as you keep an open mind to experimenting, don’t bother if you keep failing! The people who really care about you will always support you throughout your failures. They’ll never lose sight of the person behind your failures.
3. Failing is the only way to go far enough
“If you hit every time, the target is too near or too big.” –Tom Hirshfield
The only way to know that you’ve gone far enough is to go too far. And going too far is called failing.
That means that if you don’t go far enough — in other words, if you don’t fail — you’ll never know for sure where your limits really are.
Race car drivers know this to the bone. They even have a saying for it: “The one sure way to find out if you’re going fast enough is to crash”.
So if you decide to live a life of “playing it safe” — of avoiding failures altogether — you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll most likely accomplish your goal — after all, that’s a dead easy target to take aim at. Just bear in mind, however, that you’ll never be able to get the most out of your life acting that way.
4. Failing is part and parcel of innovation
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison
As much as I like creative idea generation, if you want to achieve marvelous things, having ideas is seldom the bottleneck. Putting them to action is!
That’s the difference between innovation and creativity: innovators are not just people having great ideas in a room, they are the ones who have the courage to go out and test them! And guess what happens when they put their ideas to action?
Exactly. They fail. Most of the time.
But every time they fail, they take note of the lessons failure taught them, improving their approach to solving the problem in subsequent attempts.
One of 20th century’s most influential books (and one of my favorites), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was turned down by 121 publishers before getting published. And that’s only one story of persistence in the face of failure among the many I’m sure you’ve already heard.
Consider this: If you eventually score one success, people will hardly remember your failures. So, even if you have not overcome your ego problem about failing (see point 2 above), you still have a chance: if you just keep trying and score at some point, all your mistakes will magically be gone. 
5. Failing is usually not as bad as we picture it
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes” —Oscar Wilde
OK, failure may not be so bad after all, but would I be going too far in saying that you can actually enjoy failure?
Seriously, there were times when I was so afraid to fail that when I failed — as expected — I felt immense relief. My biggest threat had been left behind as there was nothing to fear anymore: my mind was clear again. Failing can definitely set you free.
Have you failed before? Was it as terrible as you had anticipated? Well, here you are reading this article, so it seems you survived all right. Truth is, failure is almost never as bad as we imagine. Fear of failure is usually much worse than failure itself.
Too often, people who haven’t failed at anything believe that failing is a disaster. And because they’ve never failed, they believe they know it all. They refuse to learn. Every time you fail, then, look for the lesson behind it and take it as an opportunity to grow stronger, to grow wiser — to be a better person.
6. Everybody is afraid — everybody
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” –Ambrose Redmoon
Let me tell you a secret: the next guy is as scared as you are. We’re all afraid of failing. Yes, that includes even the most prolific geniuses you can think of — In fact, they seem to be the ones who agonize more about failing.”
There’s nothing wrong about it. Your fear is perfectly normal: if what you’re doing is at least minimally worth it, fear of failure will always be part of the process. It will never go away completely.
Achievers succeed not because they’re not afraid, but because they overcome fear. Every day. Over and over again. They know fear won’t go away, but they refuse to be deterred by it.
And that’s the fight worth fighting. That’s the never-ending practice we must engage on.
Final Thoughts
I first compiled the ideas in this article for my own reference. Although most of them may not be new, this is the kind of stuff I keep forgetting at the times I need them the most — and that’s why I decided to share them here. I hope you find them useful.
The 2nd part of this article is about specific strategies we can use to overcome our fear of failure: check it out!
Fantastic post!
Look forward for the next part. If I’ll fail to read it I’ll learn that I have to make a habit out of reading your blog.
These are all great points indeed, but they are the representation of the rational mind attempting to solve the problem, which originates somewhere outside of the rational mind.
I don’t think people care much about failing in private, but “public failure” is rather the bigger issue. It’s all about what people would think and do when they come in contact with what you did, your failures, bad choices, mistakes, etc.
An exaggerated version of this is the presidential elections where events from 20+ years ago can come up as if they happened yesterday and get evaluated as if they happened yesterday! Ridiculous, but happens..
We are all human, we all make mistakes and need to make them to grow, but for some reason, some people are harsh towards others’ failures even though they are likely to do similar things in similar situations; perhaps they already have during their own development.
I think ultimately the solution is, once the fears have been faced and properly evaluated, to just shut down or ignore the part of the brain that does the bickering and move on. One way to do it is to use the rational mind to reason its way through, as you presented here, but that often doesn’t really work. At least not for me.
Thanks for your comment, Emrah. I am very curious to hear about different approaches to this problem. What options do we have other than using the rational mind?
I think the ‘rational mind’ is very well capable of training the ’subconscious mind.’
Your brains reward you for success and punish you for failure. The trick is to see the success in your failure (which requires rational thinking). If you can use the lessons you learn from failure to achieve success, or you treat the lessons themselves as a success (although they may not be the intended success), your ’subconscious brain’ might start rewarding you for your failures.
This can make failing more bearable.
I agree 100% with your comment, Bas. Thanks for articulating it so well.
On a side note, I get the feeling that people sometimes refer to the term ‘rational mind’ with negative connotation. Does anyone also notice that or is it just me?
Through my personal experience I have found that the best way to overcome fear is to Reframe it. Let me explain…
Whenever I feel nervous or apprehensive about doing something my heart begins to beat rapidly. In the past I use to give-into these biological responses and shy away from my fears. However, now when this occurs I Reframe my experience by getting excited, determined and say “YES, Let’s Do This… Bring it On… I’m ready for anything…”, etc, in my head over and over again. This naturally turns my fear into excitement and helps me deal with my circumstances in much more productive ways.
The hardest part, at least for me, is to consciously identify and acknowledge the fear. After I’m able to do that, reframing indeed is a great option — provided that we do it skillfully (not trying to blatantly lie to ourselves, which, in my experience, just make matters worse).
Thanks for your contribution, Adam!
I think by embracing feeling foolish, we can overcome our fear of failure. Getting over “what will people think?” is a huge step forward in being able to take the chances you need to take to get to where you want to be.
Great post! I’m looking forward to Part 2!
Hi Luciano: I particularly like your point that failing can actually be beneficial because you realize that even though you’ve failed, you’re still alive, and hey, it was no where near as bad as you thought it would be. This makes taking risks in the future less scary.
What I do to release fear of failure is EFT (emotional freedom technique) and the Sedona Method. Both are fantastic methods to release fear, or to release the negative emotions which you might feel after you fail at something. In fact, even when you succeed you can be afraid of losing what you’ve just acquired, so it’s good to release emotions even when things have gone your way.
I enjoyed this post Luciano.
Great to have you around, Marelisa. I never used such techniques (EFT and Sedona), but I’m very curious to learn more about them. Are there any resources you recommend for newbies? I like the concept you mention of ‘releasing emotions’ even when you succeed.
I attended a few EFT seminars but never used it consistently. A simple keyword search on YouTube should bring a lot of useful resources.
During those seminars I witnessed a pretty good response for a wide variety of people.
Plan to use this pretty soon myself.
Looking forward for a post on your blog about it as soon as you draw any conclusions! Thanks, Dragos!
@Emrah
You are absolutely right about those being rational arguments.
Until recently I didn’t fully appreciate the value of failure. I think I didn’t have enough’emotional’ arguments to cope with failure.
My current approach to failure is through humour and play. And for some serious humour and insight into the value of failure I would recommend Adam Savage’s Colossal Failures at Fora.tv
Did I say I used to have problems with failing even in games? Now I feel the game is failure.
P.S. Link to the video: http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Myth.....l_Failures
Ah, you’re right, Adrian: humor and play, always a good idea!
I just added the video to my media queue and will report back here as soon as I watch it. Thanks for the link!
“Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!”
No victory of consequence was obtained without facing fear and (wisely) overcoming it. (I say wisely, because sometimes fear is the voice of sanity. So overcoming fear is part courage and part discernment.)
Great post as usual. Keep ‘em coming!
“Overcoming fear is part courage and part discernment.”
I couldn’t have said it better. Thanks for the reminder.
I must be very careful about not implying that we must always act in spite of fear.
I loved this post and I know it will come in handy for me as I work towards writing a novel, a recent goal that I’ve set for myself. I love the way you wrote this and I’m looking forward to reading Part 2!
WOW! Talking about coincidences…
A thing I learnt about myself some time ago, and I believe that to be true for lots of people, is that we’re often more concern with the frequency of our successes and failures rather than their overall cost/benefit. That are situations in which we refrain from trying something just because it has a very high probability of failure, even when the cost of each attempt is minimal and the benefits of rare success pay off.
Great article.
Excellent point, Thales!
I can think of many examples of that… the first one that came to mind is about asking someone for a date. Many people end up not doing it out of fear of failure alone. But what is the practical downside if your request for the date is not accepted? None! You’ll end up in the same situation you already are, won’t you?
There are many other situations when we have very little to lose for trying — yet another reason why having a ‘psychological armor’ against failure is very useful.
By the way, I love your latest blog post about that subject — very enlightening! Here’s the Google Translated version for English readers that may be interested.
Nice example. I’d say that “flirting” is a more extreme case of that: the chances of success are even slim, but the cost is a lot lower, so you can fail a lot and even then the occasional success pays off. That if you’re not committed, of course, otherwise the cost can be high
This is a good way to approach the topic of fear and our beliefs regarding it.
Additional Posts on “Fear”
Thank you for this article. Just what I needed to hear today!
Great post Luciano!
Lately I have been thinking that everyone rises to the level where fear paralyzes them. From this, the entire world is always operating at its fear limit. Some are more restricted than others by this, but everyone is limited. The most interesting thing is that this translates to all meaningful progress of society being the result of people confronting their fears and expanding the fear limit. Without confronting fear society would stagnate and decline. For me the most important thing that I can do everyday is finding something that makes me uncomfortable (afraid) and doing it anyway.
Thanks a lot for this great post! I basically agree with every line..
I have been working for 20 years now in R&D and prototyping/research and it’s sometimes very hard to get top-level management to understand that failure can also be an asset. In times of economic crises, it’s only natural that it would become harder, so this article comes .. at the right moment! I am waiting for part II 
Cheers,
Christophe.
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” —Albert Einstein
“Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.” —Alan Kay
Awesome ideas Luciano.
I was inspired as I read it. We all tend to forget these principles from time to time, but the mere fact that you took the time to reference them for future use and share them is encouraging.
Keep up the great content.
Great post. Fear of failure does more harm than damage. We need to look at our thoughts now and then from a third person’s perspective. All our fears would seem foolish. When we view an object by keeping it near our eyes we can’t see it properly. We need to keep it at a distance greater than our least distance of distinct vision. Similarly, viewing our fears from a third person’s perspective gives us clarity.
Great post. Fear of failure does more harm than good. We need to look at our thoughts now and then from a third person’s perspective. All our fears would seem foolish. When we view an object by keeping it near our eyes we can’t see it properly. We need to keep it at a distance greater than our least distance of distinct vision. Similarly, viewing our fears from a third person’s perspective gives us clarity.
Sorry for the mistakes in my earlier post!!
Failure is an event not a destination. Everyone fails, bit it’s apart of life. Its just the way things are, no one can really run away from it. Yet those who try tend to live meager lives which they dread continuously.
For example: Remember when you were born, well i don’t but we can imagine the scenario. Your mom was scream and so there you were. As the doctor took you out of her womb, did you say” WHAT YOU DOING don’t , let go of me I can walk.
No, it took you months before you can walk or even speak your first word. It took you months of failing before you were able to go from crawling to walking. Put this small example in the perspective of someone who want to achieve a goal. As a child you didn’t let fear stop you from walking. So Don’t let fear stop you from achieving anything you set your mind to.
Baby steps…
You hint about what, in my opinion, is the most important tool in overcoming fear of failure. I’ll further explore that idea in part 2 of the article…
Luciano, it certainly made me feel better!
Nice! All of life is a learning experience and if you don’t accept on a very visceral level that sometimes you’re going to fall down hard, then you miss a lot of really good things.
For the purpose of getting past the moments of mind-numbing, gut-churning, what-the-hell-do-I-think-I’m-doing fear, I like to use my collection of quotes (a lot of my favorites you’ve listed just in this section) and mindfulness meditation (fear and satori are mutually exclusive.)
Excellent article Luciano. It’s all about the choice we make to try and to overcome that fear. We are all more alike than different. Life holds so many lessons, one can use an inner ‘focus’ to assure they are tackling each event with a positive eye and not ‘allowing’ others or events to get them down or cause them to give up. Giving up should not be an option.
There are indeed no mistakes, just learning experiences and the lessons they show us. You have captured this so well with your words. Excellent. I so enjoyed reading this and look forward to your next article. Love and Light, Judi
Thanks everybody for the comments!
It’s awesome to see that many people got some inspiration out of this article.
Honestly, I think I suck at “inspiration writing” (I guess I am a more analytical kind of guy), so it’s great to see the points still resonated with many of you.
Excellent article Luciano. It’s all about choices and how we choose to see things. How we choose to react. I so enjoyed reading this and can’t wait for your part 2. Excellent points to incorporate into our lives to make our path smoother.
Great post! Thanks.
When I was a teenager I read a book called “If Talent Were Pizza, You’d Be a Supreme.” It was a great book that encouraged you to go out there and fail at something new, and have a good attitude about it while you were failing.
That’s certainly an interesting title for a book, Kent!
Unfortunately, it seems the book is long out-of-print, and thus not available for order on Amazon.com. Too bad, as I got really curious about it… oh well.
Thanks for the recommendation anyway!
I found the book used here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer.....dition=all
It’s been a while since I read it. If my memory serves me correctly it is mostly geared toward teenagers, and deals with self-esteem, problems of perfectionism, and finding out what your talents are.
I am fan of Frank Herbert’s literature piece:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune)
Excellent stuff – simple, true and relevant to every single human being on the planet. One more post that confirms again why your blog is #1 on my go-to list! Thanks.
Very impressive post and a good reference of smart ideas on how to overcome fear of failure. I’ll definitely check the part II.
Amazing post! Really helps to gain deeper insights into our own mind and how we perceive failure. It’s true that we must keep marching forward in life and stick to our convictions – failures do come in the way, but they are not worth quitting our journey! Success is worth all the efforts and failures that come in its path!
I really like the William D Brown quote. People aren’t failures, though sometimes is seems so. It’s so odd that it isn’t really failure that stops us, but rather, the fear of failure. In my own life, I still haven’t eradicated my fear of failure. That’s why I’m grateful for posts like this one. Your tip number 5 is perfect for me.