On Failure
How To Cope with Failure & Fear of Failure?
Your relationship with failure determines how successful you will be. The way you deal with failure and the fear of failure affects your thoughts, your emotional patterns, your actions and behaviours, and ultimately, your results.
Though most entrepreneurs have learned that failure is only feedback, that we can learn from each failed attempt, that business is all about experimenting etc., most entrepreneurs haven’t learned to feel psychologically safe around failure.
What is Failure?
Failure is the gap between our achievements and our ambition. It’s that gap between what have accomplished versus what we are striving for.
It’s not uncommon for high achievers (LINK) to feel as though they are always failing, because that gap is so big, that they never feel satisfied with their results, and they are always pushing for greater outcomes.
Failure = Success
Statistically, the more often you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. If you show up each day, and go to hundreds of sales meetings, you are more likely to make sales than if you just sit at home, waiting for something to happen.
‘I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
I’ve failed over & over again.
And that is why I succeed.’
Michael Jordan, nb 1 basketball player in the 90s.
The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that failure = success.
This is an over-simplification and cannot be the whole story, because only taking a ton of action lacks strategy, overview and can lead to burnout.
63% of entrepreneurs burn out - and that’s because this overdrive and over-action comes at a cost: your own energy, emotional regulation and balance.
Failure = Death
Yet, this isn’t the full story. Because anthropologically speaking, according to evolutionary psychology, in our hunter gatherer times 12 000 years ago, we learned that if we failed, it could kill us.
Fail at hunting? Your group, and family would maybe starve.
Fail socially? You might be exciled and left alone to die.
Our brains haven’t totally changed since then. On some level, in our cells, in our brain and in our nervous system, we believe that failure = death.
This is why we fear it, because our ego wants to survive. And even if, logically speaking, in startup hubs, we glorify failure as a stepping stone towards success. Our nervous system, and body still see it as a massive threat to our existence.
The Failure Paradox
That’s how we end up with the failure paradox: failure = success, and failure = death.
That’s why we don’t feel psychologically safe around failure.
The truth is for most of us, unless we have trained ourselves to view it differently, it feels terrible to fail. Especially if it is a project you are passionate about, that is your livelihood and where you have invested most of your time & energy.
In the whole ‘fail forward’ movement, we have diminished the pain that comes from failure.
The psychological impact of failure, and the fear of failure manifest as:
Procrastination, Avoidance, Perfectionism, Anxiety, Control…
These are all coping mechanisms we use to manage our fear of failure and feel safe. It’s no wonder we struggle to move forward with our goals, when this is happening in our subconscious, and directing our thoughts, emotions and actions.
More success, the antidote?
Most high achievers believe that if we are more successful (financially, business growth, impact, visibility…), then the fear of failure will go away. It will be like a past ghost that used to haunt them, and has vanished.
More success, paradoxically, leads to more fear of failure.
Because the more you succeed, the higher the stakes are, the higher you climb, the higher you can fall.
Success breads fear. Failure breads fear. When you are successful, you fear losing everything. When you are failing, you fear that you will never succeed.
It’s like catch 22 - where you don’t feel there is anyway to cope with the fear, and that it is always there in the background of your mind.
Cope with Failure?
If more action isn’t the solution (can lead to burnout and overdrive), and more results & success isn’t the solution (can lead to greater fear of failure), then how can you cope with both the fear of failure and failure itself?
EQUILIBRIUM
Mostly we fear failure, because we cling so strongly to success. This clinging can lead to total paralysis, or to overdrive and taking a ton of actions.
Instead, we need to find within us this place of equilibrium where we care and not cling. We care enough to show up, to take action, to move forward, but we are not desperate for success.
How can we check if we are clinging or not? Monitor your thoughts, and actions, and see if you are either avoiding all work, or over-doing your work, and then re-balance. If you are avoiding/ procrastinating, show up! If you are in over-drive, slow down!
By regularly assessing and monitoring your actions, you can find this fine balance of caring & showing up, without clinging to outcomes.
IDENTITY vs PROJECTS
When our whole identity is focused on our business, and its outcomes; if the business then fails, we feel as though we have failed as a person.
Being too strongly identified with our business takes a huge toll on our wellbeing, fulfillment, and makes us a lot more likely for us to cling to success.
On the other hand, if we are able to detach and see the business as one project, and not our whole self, we can have a clearer mind, make more rational decisions, and have a more grounded approach to running our company.
QUESTS
Whether you are on a peak of success, or in a valley of failure, we need to remember that it’s about the quests. It’s never the full story. When you approach each project, each business, each new strategy as a quest, you shift your narrative and perspective and let yourself be more playful, that’s when you are actually more likely to succeed, because you have greater ease and lightness in your work.
Impostors
Perhaps the greatest coping mechanism of all, that would make all these internal struggles easier if we could keep in mind that both success and failure are but shadows and illusions.
In the words of Rudyard of Kipling, in his poem ‘If’:
‘If you can still dream, and not make dreams your master…
[Then] you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat both impostors just the same.’
Rudyard Kipling
Thank you for reading,
Enjoy the journey,
Katie