15. How to overcome the fear of failure

In this episode, Maeva talks about the fear of failure and its vicious cycle. Listen to learn how to overcome it and hack your brain.

Study mentioned in the episode: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374057905_Is_the_Association_of_Procrastination_and_Age_Mediated_by_Fear_of_Failure

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Transcript

1:16

All right, so we are here today. I have, uh, written three podcast episodes that I'm about to record. Well, actually one of them I didn't quite write out because it's, well, you'll see. Um, and I'm here. I have my matcha latte, homemade nice and hot. Um, I've been making them at home'cause I just love matcha and, um, I wanna have them all the time. So I started making'em at home. I haven't quite hit the, uh, the, the way that it is when I go out, but I'll figure out how to, how to do that. But I have this ceremonial grade matcha, which is delicious. So today we are talking about working through your fear of failure. This is a fear that a lot of people have and, um, as I was doing the research for this episode, I understood that this fear is super, a lot more common in in younger people than it is older people. Apparently, as you get older, this fear starts to go away, and I, I didn't quite understand if that was because you gain more experience, so through experience, you gain confidence or you realize that failure is actually not really all that bad. Whatever it is, it's something that occurs more. Um, a lot more in college aged people, for example, um, than it would in people in their seventies. So that's what a lot of the studies say. I personally don't, um, experience that much of a fear of failure. I've always kind of just thrown myself out there. I am not that risk averse. I don't mind a little bit of calculated risk. I, I am sure that I do have some fear of failure in some things and that I face that, but it's something that, um, I really dove into the topic because I find it quite fascinating that some people who are actually like, it's not just, um, it's like people who are quite ambitious have this fear of failure. That paralyzes them from doing anything So they actually don't do anything and they'll never, they'll sit around at a job that they don't like. They don't take action because they're afraid of failure. And even though they have these big ambitious dreams, they end up never being able to follow through with them because they never take any action. So I, and then also just failure's not that bad, but, um, I'd wanna be Sensitive and understanding. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the fear of failure and why it is damaging to you and why it, how you can overcome it. Because we have to be able to overcome a fear of failure if we're gonna be able to do anything. Anything that matters, because things that matter, they take a little bit of risk sometimes to build big things to get better at something to s. Get a new job to grow in any way, to get better at, at relationships, to have fulfilling relationships. All these things, you have to be able to take the risk of failure because sometimes it's not gonna work in dating as well. Um, if you wanna get a good relationship, you have to put yourself out there. You have to be able to be vulnerable. And vulnerability itself is a whole other topic, but it ties into this fear of failure. What if. It doesn't go the way that I hope. What if it goes the bad way? So, um, fear of failure stops people from trying things and from learning. So there are some people who only want to do what they are really good at, uh, or what they're naturally good at. So they don't want to learn new things because to learn something new, you have to start by being bad. There's no way you can learn something new or try something new if you're not gonna allow yourself to be bad first. When you're learning a new language, the only way that people become fluent, people who actually learn a new language from scratch and become fluent, they have to look like an ass. You have to say stuff. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna make embarrassing mistakes some of the times. Um, and you have to struggle and it doesn't feel good at the beginning. So, uh, learning a new instrument, same thing. You want to play that Chopin Nour, but you cannot because you don't have the skills yet and you just have to kind of get through not being able to do it. I'm taking a sip of my, I think it's still too hot. Mm. So good though. Um, so in order to be able to grow as a person and live purposefully, because a lot of the things that we want, that we want in life, so everybody wants the different things in life. I'm not assuming everybody wants the same thing, but I think for the general population we can say that we want, uh, to feel fulfilled. We would like a job that we enjoy because we spend a lot of time there. So we would like to spend our time doing. Something that we enjoy. Uh, we would, a lot of people would like to feel challenged. Not everybody, but a lot of people would like to feel challenged at work and to learn. For a lot of people, learning is very, very important in their life. A lot I could say the general population wants, uh, intimate relationships. Ideally, or potentially long-term intimate relationships. Maybe not a marriage, but still a long-term partnership, if that's what some people want. A lot of people want to be good parents. They want to be a good partner. They want to be a good friend, and they want to feel good, and they want to not be plagued by insecurities. So, All of these things that I believe the general population does want. They take work and they take risk. They take being able to put yourself out there, being able to, uh, try things that just might not work because it's all uncertain. So if you think about it that way, the fear of failure does. You have to overcome it to be able to live a purposeful life, to live the life of your dreams. Um, which, you know, some people have this idea of, oh, life of my dreams. I'm perfectly fine how I am. Great. I'm happy for you if you're perfectly fine how you are. You say that. And yet, You might have money struggles you aren't able to. You say, oh, I wish I could go do that thing, but I can't'cause I don't have enough money. Oh, I'm in debt. I have to pay my credit card bills do, do you love paying credit card bills? I don't have a partner yet. Or everybody ghosts me. Everybody, uh, all the guys that I date with, they, they're just fuck boys. Is that what you want to not have any intimate relationships? So if you think about it that way, there are things that you want and in order to get there, we do have to kind of overcome this fear because we have to take risks and we have to put ourselves out there. So, These people, people who have fear of failures, it stops them from trying new things, stops'em from learning, stops them from putting it out, putting themselves out there. The problem is, is that it stops you from, um, getting exposure to the things that might help you build confidence and reduce the fear of failure, because the only way to build the confidence, well, fear failure is overcame, overcome through. Confidence in taking the risk of trying the thing, right? But confidence is built through competence or through experience, through trying the thing anyway, and just overcoming it. So if you're not starting, then it's really hard to overcome the fear because you're not putting yourself, you, you're, you're stuck in this cycle. Where you're not taking the risk of failure to learn the experience and then you continue to feel like you might fail because you don't have the experience.'cause you've never been exposed to the risk. So it is, it is a cycle that we should try to get over, in my opinion. So in a study you did a study on 197 participants, which I will link to in the show notes, aged 18 to 90 years old. And not surprisingly, higher levels of fear of failure, were linked to more procrastination behavior. So the more you fear failure even, and the people who fear failure more are the ones who really wanna succeed, are the ones who really wanna do big things as well. Um, so then you procrastinate and then you end up not doing it at all and you end up, it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. So they set these ex, you set your expectations for yourself. Like, I have to perform at this level. I have to do it this way. It has to be perfect. It has to be the most amazing thing that they've ever seen. Even if you're just learning, or even if it's the first time you're doing something, which is crazy to think about really, like I. It has to be bad at the beginning. Um, so they're plagued by their own fear of failure and they're incapable of completing this thing to meeting their own standards or expectations. Um, so they postpone the beginning of doing it. It's kind of how, um, sometimes I see people who want to be business people and uh, they go get a bachelor's degree in business. Then they go get a master's degree in business and then they go and get a PhD in business. I've actually seen this dude just go start the business. Yeah. But I might not be ready. I might fail'cause I don't know enough. Yeah, that's You're gonna learn more in the first six months of running a business than in your entire PhD or running a business. Go out there and do the thing. Um, but again, they're afraid that they're not gonna know everything perfectly, but the best business owners throw themselves in it, um, and they just learn through the experience. So failure itself is an illusion actually, because there's, there's really only two ways that we could. That we could, um, look at it. It's either I succeeded or I gained an experience, right? So we're afraid to fail because we believe we place the meaning on it. We believe that we're not good enough if we do fail, um, we say, We attach it to our own self-worth. We say, there's something wrong with me if I fail at this, but I think I am gonna fail and I don't wanna like prove that fear, so I'm just not gonna do it at all. What if we reframe this, and I'm gonna talk today in the episode about reframing this kind of fear. Say what if instead? Every failure, instead of saying it means we're not good enough. What if we reframed it to say we were one step closer to the thing that we want? One failure means boom. Okay, I'm one step closer there. So if we can frame it that way. The fear of failure actually has a scientific name. It's called Act tiki phobia. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. Phobias. And it's an intense fear of failure. So it comes from the Greek word Atticus. Again, I dunno if I'm pronouncing that right, which means unfortunate. So, Um, people with this very intense fear of failure, although I think a lot of people have it to some degree, they avoid situations where they see any potential for failure. So you like a girl, you're never gonna go. Up to her and, and ask her out. You're gonna wait for her to come to you. Uh, you also won't be vulnerable and share your feelings. You are not gonna take a big exam. You're not gonna, you really wanna be a lawyer, but you're never gonna try the bar exam because there's a risk of failure or job interview. There's a job that you like. The requirements are a little beyond your own experience, so you're not even going to try,'cause you're not gonna, you don't think you can perform the job perfectly. The. Phobia is also referred to as fear of negative evaluation. Which I find very interesting'cause it, it shows that it's connected to how other people perceive you. So you're afraid that other people are gonna think that you're a failure. You're afraid that other people are gonna be disappointed in you. If you don't do it right, you're afraid, uh, that other people might think you're dumb or that other people are gonna judge you for some reason. So this is also tied to the fear of failure. And so a lot of this is learning how to let go of that, which is very easy. Tough to be able to work through that. Um, but it's something that you, we are able to achieve as people is to, and you, I mean, I think a lot, most people achieve it by the time they're quite, you know, the last third or fourth of their life, um, in a regular human lifespan. But I believe we can achieve it. I've seen, I experienced myself, That we can achieve this earlier in life. This letting go of the need, um, of approval from others and the need of validation from others. And that's kind of also what drives this fear of failure. So, um, in this attic phobia, it's actually a medical, it's actually considered a medical thing. Medical, uh, issue. I don't wanna say disorder yet. A disorder'cause I'm not actually quite sure. But this fear actually produces physical symptoms in your body. If you've been listening to me, the amount of time, you know, I talk a lot about how the brain is connected to the body. All of these things have an effect on mental health. Everything that we go through emotionally has an effect on physical health. Um, it causes illness and it causes symptoms that cause illness. So this fear of failure can cause insomnia, sleepless nights because you're overthinking and you have severe anxiety about failure, about something. Um, the stress can cause chest pains. Uh, you can have. Panic, panic episodes about it and panic causes digestive issues, joint and muscle play, pain, headaches, difficulty breathing, especially when you're faced with this situation that you did not plan for, that you did not expect. Uh, and you can also have feelings of constant fatigue and you can be running late all the time because your lack of not motivated because of this fear. And it can also cause emotional symptoms. So you can have excessive worrying about what can happen if things go wrong or if you fail'cause you're trying something new. Um, or you could procrastinate again. That's what we talk a lot about, uh, in this episode, is procrastination. If you're assigned something that has triggered your anxiety about if you might not do it perfectly, then you just end up procrastinating as much as possible. Uh, then if you've done something and it didn't go exactly up to your expectations, then you're constantly rationalizing how something went wrong. You're constantly thinking about it, you're trying to figure it out, and you have exaggerated feelings of anxiety, fear, or panic or any for any, when you take any kind of risk, um, or anything that you're gonna do where you're not completely sure of what the outcome is. And that's no way to live, is it? So this kind of fear usually develops from people, like if you had a past experience where you failed, they're like, In dating if you ask somebody out and it was, they rejected you in a really embarrassing way, and you said, right, I'm never gonna do that. I certainly had a big blocks about being vulnerable and open. I remember when I was a teenager, I wrote a lot in my diary, which I saw recently that I was like, I just wanna get rid of emotions. I don't wanna have emotions, I don't wanna be vulnerable. I, I don't even wanna feel anything. Um, and it's because of what Happened, uh, when I was vulnerable to te to other teenagers. Imagine we said our entire kind of future life thing when we're dealing with other teenagers or children who we can't, we can't live our, the rest of our lives based on our interactions with teenagers when we were teenagers. Um, or you might have learned to fear failing through different situations. Maybe your parents were, um, Very harsh about what would happen if you fail, or they were very disappointed in you if you didn't get an A plus, uh, or you only got rewarded in love when you were doing something great. I. Um, getting good grades or cleaning up or, you know, being the perfect child so that anything beyond that you say, okay, well I'm loved for this, so I might not be loved for those other things. And that's certainly something that I can relate to. Or you're a perfectionist. I'm gonna record a whole episode one day about perfectionism. I'm so anti perfectionist now, but I think it really plagues people. Um, So the way to look at failure, and again, I'm gonna say a statement which you're gonna like, okay, that's easier said than done. I am gonna try to give you tips at the end of this episode. Well, very shortly, very soon. Um, but it is either you succeed or you gain experience. I don't remember what the quote is, but there is no fail. Like yeah. It's just you succeeded or you gain experience. So like, and we learned this as children. So as a child you learn how to walk. and you fall on your face and you cry, and then you get up and you try again. You fall again.'cause you don't know how to use your legs, you just don't, haven't used that part of your muscles yet. And eventually you figure out how to do it because you are a human that's gonna fit into society and walk. You learn how to ride a bike, you crash. I remember crashing when I first rode a bike, I couldn't do it right, and we were, at that age, we were totally fine with failing at things and doing them and keeping trying because that's just how you learn stuff. Because we didn't have the muscle memory at some point in our adult lives, we lose that concept of it's okay to be bad at something before we're good at it. And I don't know where it's pressure from society, from teachers, from parents, from all around us, from ourselves, but we lose that kind of idea where a lot of the things that we want to try, um, again, if you've been listening to me for any amount of time, it's all muscle memory. It's all creating new neural pathways when you learn how to do something and it's never gonna be good the first time, it's always gonna be bad as you, as you learn, and you just have to put yourself out there and try. Um, So let's talk a little bit about how to overcome this fear of failure. So here's a tip that, um, I actually have to give credit to somebody on TikTok that I just saw. Unfortunately, I lost the person who did it, but this is not my idea. Um, so I just have to say that. But instead of weighing the pros and cons of doing something, which is what a lot of us do when we try to come up with reasons not to take on a risk or to do failure. So for example, Uh, weighing the pros and cons of taking on a new big project at work. So the pros could be you gain, you know, you do a great job, and the cons, we do bad job. So our brains navigate to negativity. So we're always, you have to understand how the brain works and you have to know that our brains always We'll give way more focus to the negative side. So we can try to kind of hack that by also focusing on the negative side. But instead of weighing the the pros and the cons, you weigh the cons versus the cons. So the cons of doing it versus the cons of not doing it. So then we're really gonna be able to see what the con, the true con would be. So, again, in our example, I wanna take on a new big project at work, but I don't really feel ready for it. The cons of doing it might be, I might not get it right. You know, I might fail, it might be a disaster, and then they're gonna be disappointed in me. Um, or so, you know, a lot of people would be like, okay, well I better just not do it because it's gonna make me look bad. But the cons of not doing it, so if we look at the cons of not doing it is I'm never gonna gain this experience. Which means I can't get a better job, which means I can't get a promotion, which means I won't get a raise. Uh, I'll never move forward in my job, and I won't feel satisfied if I don't try these kind of things. So if you think about it that way, to me the con of not doing it seems much larger, right? So you kind of put, you weigh those out and you go for the, for the con of doing it. Another thing that you need to do is understand what your underlying fear is. So the fear of failure comes from different underlying fears for everybody. If you sit for a moment and relax into a meditative state, so you have to, to be able to speak to your body and understand these things, um, you have to kind of get really, really relaxed. Get your brainwaves to go a little bit slower. And then that's when it's easiest to connect and understand and receive messages. And you can start to ask yourself, what is driving your fear of failure? So the format you can ask is, if I fail, then complete. Complete the sentence. So for example, if I fail, then people will realize I'm not who they thought I was, or if I fail, My parents will be disappointed in me. Or if I fail, it will prove that I am no good. Or if I fail, my whole career will be over. It'll be proof that I was an imposter, that I was a fraud. So these are, um, the stories that we tell ourselves that we have to figure out how to reframe because they're all just subjective stories that we have kind of invented.'cause it could be, it's an illusion. You can frame it however you want it. But these are real core beliefs that we have deep inside of us. So if we're, when we're trying to reframe these ways of talking about ourselves or if this, then that, which is very black and white, very factual stories that we, or it's not factual, but we take it as factual. Our bodies take it as factual'cause we've been telling it to ourselves for so long. This, if this, then that black and white stories, it's gonna feel, there's gonna, there's gonna be a lot of friction when you, with your brain, when you try to reframe it. So if I fail, then something else. Actually that might not be true. Trying to convince yourself it's not true. And it's such a difficult exercise to do.'cause remember the brain is a command center. Um, it's telling, it's sending signals out to your body all the time, trying to keep it alive, trying to balance all the neurotransmitters, the hormones, all of those kind of things. To keep you alive as efficiently as as possible. So it wants to make only the most efficient decisions. Um, and so when you're trying to reframe stories that have been set in your mind that you've been telling yourself for literally decades, um, it's not an efficient process to try to reframe this kind of story. It's completely out of your comfort zone. But if you understand that your brain, or some people might call it the ego in this sense, is going to try to Keep you in your comfort zone because it's safer and it by safer, it's actually just more efficient for your body, for your brain. Um, you're gonna have to force yourself a little bit to think more open-mindedly. So one thing, um, because for example, if I fail, my parents would be disappointed in me. Some of you might be listening to this and be like, yeah, that's a fact. There's no other No other truth. Um, like this is, I don't know, you don't know my parents, you know, but it helps if you try to consider it as if you weren't talking about yourself. You were talking about one of your peers or somebody else. Remember, we all have equal chances. Why would it be true for them, but not for you? But you try to think about it then? Okay, well actually, if I could see that example of it being true for somebody else, maybe it could be true for me. So, um, for them you might see this, so I failed parents just be disappointed in me. You'd be like, well, no, they're still gonna love them. They're still, um, it's probably just they're putting on that pressure because they want them to succeed, but, uh, they're still gonna. They're gonna be happy that you tried, you know? Um, so you can try to reframe these statements that you made to, for example, if I fail, I. It'll show that I tried, or if I fail, it means I'm closer to finding the way that actually works. I know that that way doesn't work now, or if I fail, I will have learned something. So try this exercise of reframing that if I fail, then, uh, which I'm telling you is not gonna be easy. You're gonna have to let go of the ego and try to be a little bit open-minded here, because there's gonna be a lot of friction in your head when you do it. And the last tip I have for how to try to manage this fear of failure, and this one's fun, is expose yourself to failure on purpose. Yes. Try to, instead of thinking, I, this needs to succeed, this needs to be perfect. Say, I'm gonna try out this thing, this is probably gonna fail. My goal is just to learn. My goal is just to learn what I'm gonna do here or my to learn. So, um, You need this kind of exposure therapy to build confidence in most places, so you need to. Practice doing the thing. And then, so it's not only practicing facing your fear of failure, it's actually gonna be, if you do it on something that you actually care about, something that you actually wanna learn about, something that is towards your goal, you're actually gonna build that, gain, that experience, uh, which is gonna make you more confident, which is going to then be able to be, you're gonna be more, um, competent when you're actually doing that thing. And then the fear of failure is gonna go down because you're actually more likely to succeed doing it. So you wanna start small. If you have a big thing that you wanna do, start small, break it into smaller steps and reframe against, instead of saying, I'm gonna do this and it has to be perfect, say I'm doing this to try to learn from it, it's most likely gonna fail or it's probably gonna fail, or big chance of failing. I'm just trying to, I'm gonna do my best and I'm gonna learn. Um, so you'll actually get farther ahead and start to build confidence, which hopefully will lead you to procrastinating a little bit less when you reframe it. So that's my episode on fear of Failure. Uh, if you need any help with this, this is the kind of stuff that I coach people about. Um, so we really dig into what are these wounds? I help you find what the, the Inner child wounds are the stories that you tell yourself what the fears relating to this are, and then we break them down and dismantle them and, and do all of this together. So there's the, um, the link in the show notes if you wanna apply to doing some one-on-one work with me and, um, It, please do subscribe to the channel. It would really help me and share this with anybody that you think might be useful, uh, who might find it useful. Anybody that you think suffers from this, I would be very grateful. And if you could also leave a review, uh, please, please do. If you enjoy my podcast at all, it would really, really help me. And let me know if you have, and, um, that's it for me, and I'll see you in the next one.