The Fear of Failure
Understanding success, failure and fear.
👋 Hello People,
Ishant this side with the first issue of Packed-Unpacked. I serve you summarized content about psychology, life, money and startups straight to your inbox.
Sign up for free here 👇
The topic for today is "The Fear of Failure".
For today's issue, I curated the content from a few Ted Talks of people who overcame their fear and articles about the psychology behind how fear works and how we humans respond to it.
Reading this newsletter would honestly save you around 40-45 minutes and you will be able to learn as much as I did by reading articles and watching YouTube videos about the topic. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Ready? Let's dive in then...
🧠 The Psychology of Fear
Fear is a natural instinct and we owe our survival to it, but oftentimes a fear is irrational and even makes some people avoid following their dreams. And equally destructive is a fear of success, which prevents people from transforming their aspirations into reality.
According to psychologists, a fear of failure may develop for many different reasons, ranging from being raised by hypercritical parents to being victimized by a bully or experiencing a traumatic event during childhood.
If you’ve ever failed at something and wound up feeling humiliated or upset, these emotions may have stayed with you far beyond the initial incident. And, if left unchecked, this self-doubt can develop into an immobilizing force that ultimately undermines your efforts to achieve your goals and leads you to miss out on invaluable opportunities in life.
After reading this, all of you must be like:
This sounds like too much Jargon right? Yes, because it is.
In simple language, we as humans are pretty afraid of all the things all the time. Fear and stress are mechanisms developed by our brain after years of evolution to make us attentive and to mobilize us. But sometimes, the fear becomes so overwhelming that we stop responding to it with actions. That's when people give up.
Below, you will read about experiences of two people with the fear of failure but in two different circumstances and because of two completely different reasons. Learn how they overcame their fears and changed their lives for good.
📈 Success or Failure: The Drive to Keep Going
After you achieve great success, the fear of disappointing people can take over you. That's what Elizabeth Gilbert has to say. She is a celebrated author whose memoir Eat, Pray, Love has sold over 12 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book even got made into a feature film of the same name. After all this success, Elizabeth felt like she would not be able to write anything again which people would love. She feared that people who loved her work would be disappointed because it would not be the same as "Eat, Pray, Love".
According to her, this is how our brain interprets great failure and great success:
Most of our lives, we are in the middle, just being "Normal". Failure catapults you abruptly way out over one corner which is full of blinding darkness of disappointment. Success on the other hand, catapults you just as far, but in the opposite direction, into the equally blinding glare of praise, fame and recognition.
Your subconscious is incapable of discerning the difference between these two situations, even though we as a society consider one as good and the other as bad. The mind only accounts for absolute value of the exact distance that you have been thrown away from yourself. In both the cases, there is an equal danger of getting lost out there because of the fear and confusion.
But in both the cases, the recipe for self restoration is same - You have to find your way home again. Your home is that thing in this world, that you love more than you love yourself. It is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.
💪 Facing the "Fear of Failure"
Have you ever heard someone say "Starting a business is hard", "9 out of 10 companies fail" or "4 out of 5 companies fail"? I am sure you must have. These are the same things people told Caleb Meakins when he was planning to work on his idea and start his own business just after college. He was so frustrated by this pessimism. Most of the people give in to the pressure and self doubt that arises because of the pessimistic attitude. Caleb on the other hand realized that this pessimism, at the heart of it, was nothing but the fear of failure.
"What would you do if you could not fail?"
Ask this question to yourself. What is that one thing you would do if you could not fail? Now keep that answer with yourself.
Caleb saw this question as a challenge and started something called 40 Days of Rejection. The idea was to go out and do challenges that people thought were impossible. The only rules were that it has to be challenging, entertaining and legal. Just for example, one of the challenge was "Go into a fast-food chain and ask them to cook your raw chicken." Obviously they said no, but he did ask them anyway.
These challenges made Caleb step out of his comfort zone and allowed him to grow, learn and develop while he was doing these silly things. He realized that fear of failure is nothing but caring about "what other people think" so deeply, but the reality is, nobody cares. So often in our life, we don't chase our dreams because we care too much about what people think about us. Let me tell you a secret, they don't.
In his book The 4 Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss says “A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” To really succeed, you need to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, be it asking for a promotion, or funding for your business or even asking out a girl you fancy. It is definitely not easy, it is really really hard. But you have to remember - "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone".
✔️ Ready for a challenge?
On this note, I want to give you a challenge. Remember the answer to the question I asked you above. What would you do if you could not fail?
Now go to any social media platform where you have enough people following you. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or even WhatsApp and share this answer, share your goal. Share what you want to do and where you want to be in a few years, without fearing what people would say. Tag me if you need some support, I will be there to cheer you.
Share it with your parents without caring about how pessimistic or optimistic would they be about this decision. Have that one uncomfortable conversation, face that situation once and see how it feels.
Resources and References:
Disclaimer: This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. I am not a psychologist or a certified professional to give advice on psychological issues and disorders.
It's awesome. So relatable..seems just for me.
That was really nice! It totally changed my perspective towards fear... 👍