Ten Ways to Conquer Your Fear of Failure
Sometimes we feel so emotionally fragile that any setback, disappointment or investment may seem capable of driving us to the limit and despair. At other times, we adopt a demon attitude and move boldly in the direction of our dreams, parrying and deflecting anti-aircraft bullets that get in our way.
What makes the difference between those precarious states of mind and the assertive and self-confident ones?
Why does the fear of failure intimidate and afflict us at certain points, but not at others? And what can we do to let go of fear and achieve more of our goals, with even greater consistency?
Here are ten tips that can help you:
(1) Appreciate that winning and losing happen in streaks. Just look at the winning pattern that any college or professional team follows. Rarely do teams, especially over the course of long seasons, win two games, lose one game, and do it week after week, posting a championship record of .667 at the end of the year. The 2007 New York Yankees had a miserable start to the season for the first two months, but then slowly and steadily came out of their slump and became the AL Wild Card champions. The Bible even refers to cycles of prosperity of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of scarcity. If you look at failure from a broader perspective, you’ll notice regularities in it, and also in winning, that you didn’t see before.
(2) Tell yourself: My past is not my future. Yes, you may have suffered so much from stage fright that your speeches have seemed stiff and unwelcome. But that doesn’t mean they SHOULD remain painful and lifeless. Decide to improve and you will.
(3) Inch by inch is a piece of cake. Meter by meter, it is difficult. Take small but steady steps toward your big dreams and you’ll make great progress, overall. But try to become an overnight sensation, and you’ll face a lot of odds to prevail as you set yourself up for failure.
(4) Set broad goals that you stick to. Reverend Robert Schuller built an amazing Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. He did so by requesting gifts, large and small. And when asked why he selected such a big project, he said that people like to be a part of something great, it motivates them. The same logic applies to choosing your targets. They should be exciting enough to make you want to overcome all the obstacles that stand in the way of reaching them.
(5) Mastery of many things takes time. I earned a black belt in Kenpo Karate after eight long years of classes, sparring, and conditioning. At first, I didn’t have the coordination or balance to stand on one foot. By the time I got my black belt, I could perform techniques and katas that required exquisite precision and bodily mastery. Thousands of people attended the same school but did not persist long enough to reach the highest ranks. They just didn’t allow themselves enough time to succeed.
(6) Babe Ruth hit more home runs than any player of his day and also held another record. He also struck out the most times. Why do we remember it? To hit home runs you have to swing the bat. You have to try and try and try again, and keep track of the progress you’re making while minimizing the negatives you’re overcoming.
(7) Label the failure differently. You can call it “learning,” “feedback,” or “corrective reinforcement.” As much as possible, try to understand what you could have done better, and then do it. If there’s no lesson to be learned, just keep going without dwelling on the results you achieved that felt less than completely rewarding.
(8) Make a sanctuary for the famous people who kept on striving, for the workers of the world. It will house many members of the elite, such as Thomas Edison, who said that he did not fail, but learned a thousand ways that electricity did NOT work. Abraham Lincoln deserves pride of place for losing all his bids for elective office except for the presidency. I think of contemporary tycoon David Geffen, who got his start in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency. When he got the chance to be a talent agent, he made about 300 phone calls a day, more than anyone else. As you may know, he established Geffen Records and co-founded DreamWorks Studios, and is a self-made billionaire.
(9) When you need inspiration, watch a baby trying to learn to walk. My daughter initially had a hard time mastering forward crawling. She was perfect going backwards and effective from side to side, but her forward “gears” seemed inoperable. Then, about a month after I noticed the challenge from her, she mastered that movement and began to stand up, first holding onto objects. I can’t tell you how many times she fell before she was able to stand up steadily and then take steps on her own. But her domain was ultimately his, probably because she didn’t have the concept of “failure” in her mind. I believe that human beings are born without one. Unfortunately, it’s a learned construct, because we look outside of ourselves for performance standards to meet and exceed. If we were to suspend our standards, even briefly, we could make further progress and much faster.
(10) Remember THE LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS, which says that if you do enough, you will succeed. Do more than that and you’ll probably get rich. Beat that effort and you will become a legend.
In my doctoral program at USC, we had a highly competitive intellectual atmosphere that was fraught with fear of failure. One day I asked a particularly cool professor how he managed to finish his doctoral program at the University of Washington.
He said: “I did the best I could and I figured if I didn’t fit right, sooner or later somebody would tell me. But until that happened, I wasn’t going to worry.”
Perhaps that is the best advice of all.