Confronting the Fear of Failure
Failure is one of the "dirtiest" words in our society — including all the four letter words. Many people would rather be odd, hostile, overworked or many other "terrible" things than be seen as a failure. With the tremendous stress we place on success, this isn't surprising. After all, successful people are winners aren't they?
People feel sorry for losers and no one wants to be pitied. At the same time, we are constantly bombarded with truisms to make us feel better after an apparent failure. These are phrases like, "We learn from our mistakes, you can't win them all, everybody's wrong sometimes" — but these don't really help.
The Myth of Positive Thinking
People tend to use the phrase, "Think positive" as not thinking at all about what can go wrong. This kind of attitude usually leads to more failures, because people are lulled into a sense of security and fail to see the pitfalls in front of them.
People need to learn how to fail. Everyone does fail at some time, but it is a major problem only if they let one failure defeat them altogether or if it keeps them from attempting new ventures.
Failing Well
How many people can lose a big business deal and say, "That was great. I learned something from it and am better for it." Unless we can say it - and really mean it - we probably weren't learning that much from the experience.
It may come as a surprise to hear that truly successful people not only have failed, but also are good at failing. Studies have found that we may have been lucky if we were forced to fail. One might even say that a key to success is learning to fail well.
A professional sports team is a good example. Losing not only doesn't permanently defeat them; they usually profit by that loss and learn to accept it. This doesn't mean they stop trying. Many people consider themselves failures when they really have just quit trying. We cannot "cop out" on our problems, because copping out can only leave us feeling inadequate.
What Are We Afraid Of?
To analyze the reasons why we feel pressure or anxiety about failure, we have to understand that it is the fear of failure that hurts far more than the failure itself. Actually, it is the fear of not being sure what will happen. Most of us can learn to accept and deal with the worst if we really know what's coming. We may not like it or look forward to it, but we can handle it. Not knowing is a different story. It creates anxiety, vacillation and a very gut level desire to escape the whole problem. Each of us is different in the things we fear, and to analyze the reasons we are pressured by the fear of failure we have to find out what kinds of failure bother us. There are many kinds of motivations, values and goals and ways we might not live up to our expectation. A few common fears might serve as examples.
Blowing Up Problems Out Of Proportion
We don't take it very literally when a teenage says, "If such and such happened, I'd just die," but the fear is a real one. It basically says that we need a certain amount of "something" to make life worth living. It might be the need to be admired, appreciated, or just accepted by others. But, we have to do certain things to be held in esteem by others.
Being accepted, for instance, implies that there are some general rules or norms to be followed. If we try to take these rules automatically as a right way to be, we won't be able to live up to all of them and we will continually feel inadequate.
Setting Unrealistic Expectations
Another fear centers on the need to be unique in some way — a need to be better than others. It is extremely unlikely that any one person can be better than all the other 6 billion people in the world in anything. If we feel we have to be better than somebody else, rather than just being the best we can, we are doomed to be a constant failure until the day we die. It is also a good point to remember that, even if we made it to the top, it wouldn’t be long before someone else came along who would better us.
Other common fears in this category include the fear of losing or of being beaten by the guy in the next office or the next sales call, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being controlled or hemmed in. There are many others, of course, each as potent to those who feel them as the next.
Strategies to Overcome Pressure and Beat the Fear of Failure
The question is often asked of psychologists, "I can see why I feel the pressure, but what can I do about it?" And usually the person thinks he's being kidded when the answer is, "Tell someone all about it and then use your imagination."
Basically two things happen when we begin to feel pressured. We get anxious or nervous and tighten up, and we begin to rely on our defense and escape mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are: getting a lot of sleep but still feeling tired, coming home at night and getting lost in the TV or newspaper, or a hundred others.
Dealing with Symptoms Rather than Causes
The result of these mechanisms is that we begin to lose sight of the issues or problems by trying to put them out of our minds so they don't worry us so much. As the problems become vague, solutions become more improbable, and, unconsciously, that makes us more anxious. This is not a weakness. Biologically we are programmed to either fight or run in a pressure situation, just the way animals are. We are also programmed this way psychologically. We all tend to find excuses to justify our behavior before it happens and this is our way of running. Frequently, we try to rationalize behavior after it happens and this is how we fight back.
Healthy Failure
Reducing the pressure requires that we break the mental set that "success is equal to right and therefore equal to good, while failure is equal to wrong and, as such, is bad." We have to learn to accept failure as a normal healthy part of life. We all fail sometimes, and if we can learn to bend rather than break under the pressure of failure, we are much better off.
In order to reduce the pressure and make us feel better, it is vital to reduce the fear of the problem by bringing everything out in the open — and not only the facts of the problem, but also our feelings about it. Go ahead and let the feelings out - it is a healthy reaction and one calculated to relieve stress.
We Used to Call it Shell Shock
During WWII, the Allies found out that wounded Russian Soldiers were not suffering from "shell shock" in hospitals as much as American soldiers were. The Russians insisted on keeping even wounded men on the lines, and there were far fewer long-term problems, because the men were forced to face their fears and get past them rather than run away from them.
Once we face the realities of the problem, we can bring our imagination into play. We can imagine what the worst outcomes of the problem could be, and then think of alternatives open to us. Once a person realizes the worst and can develop alternatives, he is relieved of much of the terrible pressure of uncertainty.
Copping Out
Of vital importance, also, is not giving up. A good illustration of this is a salesman who knows that for every sale he makes, he will get ten rejections. If he starts his day with a rejection, he can say, "I'm probably not going to be able to do anything today, so I might as well knock off," or he can say, "One down, only nine to go until I make my sale." The latter will keep him on the job longer with a much more satisfying feeling and better sales.
The Basic Steps in Summary
1. Talk about it — with somebody who will listen and be neutral. Get it out — facts and feelings.
2. Imagine trying to overcome the problem and falling short of the goal (failing); then figure what the worst consequences would be and what could be done about them. Thus, if the worst does happen, you're at least prepared and if it doesn't, then you're relieved and probably pleasantly surprised.
3. We can give ourselves extra chances. An illustration of this might be the baseball team whose slogan is, "Wait till next year." Eventually their continued effort will pay off.
4. Have something to fall back on. For many people, religion is a back-up. They turn to it when they do fail, in order to ask for help. Other people develop strong personal relationships to fall back on realizing that a person can't do everything himself.
5. Most powerful of all - take the chance and face it. There is nothing better to reduce the fear of failure than having it happen and knowing what it can and can't do. We must face it, live through it and prove to ourselves we can survive it.
