Most people experience fear of failure in their lifetimes. It’s totally normal and understandable, but it’s also potentially harmful. As far as I’ve observed, a fear of failure seems to be the biggest factor that stops people from creating a life they love. 

If we let our fear of failure get the best of us, it can be paralyzing enough to stop us from taking necessary steps towards our goals.

The good news is, if we can simply reduce or quiet this fear, it will increase the chances that take the necessary steps towards our ideal lifestyles.

In this post, I’ll offer three ways of thinking about failure that will hopefully help you quiet your fear and stop getting in your own way. 

1. Failure is Not a Part of Your Identity. 

Most of us fear failure because we believe that if we fail, it means something negative about ourselves. We feel that failing means that we are “bad at _____,” or “not smart enough to do _____,” or “incapable of ______.”

This is an example of a false belief most of us learn to believe early on in life: if we fail, we are failures. 

From a very young age, other people give us praise or consequences based on how we perform. If we behave well, get good grades, and play well with others, we are socially rewarded with approval and praise. But if we do the opposites of those things, we receive disapproval and consequences. 

Based on our behavior, people say things like “_____ is a smart kid,” or “____ is a polite young man” or “_____ is a problem child” This language, while it is a normal part of growing up, teaches us to associate our performance, whether it be successes or failures, with our identity.

So when we fail, instead of saying, “I failed this time,” we’ve learned to say “I am a failure.”

This completely dismisses the fact that people are constantly changing and learning new things. 

We can be bad at something in the beginning and then learn to be good at it later, but calling ourselves failures reduces the chances that we will try to do better in the future, and therefore reduces our chances of succeeding.

“Failure is an event, never a person.”

– William D. Brown

When we associate our failures with our identity, we start to believe that there’s something wrong with us simply because things have gone “wrong” during periods of our lives. 

This is a dangerous mistake, and frankly, it leads to a slippery slope.

It is extremely important to avoid associating failure with your identity.

This is because, when you tell yourself that you’re “a failure,” you begin to believe that you will keep failing in the future.

If this attitude continues, then you start to believe that trying and failing will hurt more than not trying at all. And ultimately, you choose to stop trying.

I’ve felt this before, and so many people I love have felt this too. But this feeling is extremely inaccurate, and frankly, it’s overly harsh. 

Throughout our lives, we are guaranteed to have many moments that do not work out as well as we’d hope. We make mistakes, have bad days, and fail at plenty of attempts to accomplish our goals. This doesn’t mean we are failures. It just means that we are human. 

Ultimately, failure is not a part of your identity.

Regardless of how many things have “not worked out” for you, it doesn’t make you “a failure.” Even if you have failed or given up on something before, you can choose to un-give up, try again, or try something different at any time. 

In short, you are so much more than your failures, so try not to take them too personally. 

2. You Are in The Rising Action of Your Hero Story.

Remember when you were in grade school english class, learning about the stages of stories? You know, the exposition, rising action, climax, etc.? Well the interesting thing about failures is that they almost always occur during the rising action of stories.

Think about every exciting “hero” story you have heard of (Anything from The Avengers to Mulan, Luke Skywalker to Woody and Buzz). At some point before the climax of these stories, it seems like everything goes wrong. 

And it seems like they are about to lose it all. 

But even when the situation is impossibly grim, the hero decides to double down, to persist. And miraculously, they pull it off at the last moment.

As human beings, we love these stories. We love the perseverance, the grit, and the triumph. The bigger the barriers and challenges the heroes overcome, the happier and more satisfied we are we are when they succeed. 

And the same goes for your life. 

There are so many people who quit during the rising action, and don’t give themselves a chance to see how truly exciting and interesting their life stories can be. So, if you want to have a story of triumph and achievement, you have to be willing to trudge through the failures that always come before the climax.

 If you persist, you’ll be well on your way to something that is absolutely worth fighting for. 

3. Failure is an Inherent Part of The Road to Success. 

If we listened to a hero story that completely lacked any failures, missteps, challenges, trials, and errors, we’d probably scoff and say, “That’s so unrealistic,” (as if the talking toys and space jedi’s were a normal part of our lives, haha). 

But we’d be right. Stories of triumph without failures are not realistic. For every hero, their failures are an inherent part of their road to success. And often, overcoming their past failures are exactly what gives them the information and the strength they need to win it all in the end. 

In other words, you need your failures. Even if they hurt at times, they have a unique capacity to teach us about who we are, what we value, what we really want, and how we can achieve our goals.

“You always pass failure on your way to success”

-Mickey Rooney

If you can convince yourself that failure is an inherent part of your success story, then when failure rears its ugly head, it will seem less like a setback and more like a learning experience.

In conclusion: 

Dissociate your failures from your identity. 

When you’re failing, recognize yourself as the hero who is moving through the rising action of your story.

And trust that failure is an inherent part of your road to success.

It won’t be easy, but with practice, these three ways of thinking about failure will help you muster the courage to do things you might’ve been hesitant to try before. If you are willing to try and fail, then there’s no limit to where your life story will take you. 

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Cheers, 

Morgan Rita Barbret