Fear of failure and change.

You can listen to the audio version of this post below.

This is a part of the October blog challenge. You can find the other posts here.

Yesterday, I wrote about how perfection can keep me tethered and prevent me from making deliberate changes in my life, and today is about the other factor which I find can prevent me from making the deliberate changes that I want, and that is fear.

And fear of change comes to me in a variety of forms. It is there when my perfectionist tendencies are present - in the form of fear of an imperfect result. But it can also be fear of failure, fear of rejection or judgement from others, and fear of the unknown. 

My original plan was to write about ALL the fears in this one post, but I started writing and I realized that I wanted to break it up, so today is about fear of failure. And for me, fear of failure is different to fears around perfection. I find that fear of failure is present in my decisionmaking process, and sometimes if I am not careful they can feel like a fear of change itself. 

Fear of failure has been one of my fears from childhood/teenage life. I remember walking out of almost every exam I ever did, terrified that I had failed it. My friends thought I was crazy, and sometimes they didn’t believe that it was something I was afraid of, since I often performed well. Sometimes they thought I was being overly dramatic. I was never able to explain it to them, but it used to fill me up like a sense of dread - that I had made some sort of careless mistake like writing my answers in the wrong place, misunderstood the question, or just written absolute gibberish and forgotten all of the correct answers. It was a fear that would grip me until I saw my results.

Going to university where the work was a hundred times harder didn’t help. I was often paralyzed by the fear of failure. It felt as if my world would end. I worked myself into the ground to pass university. I would watch those who seemed to find ease or who would cram at the last minute with extreme envy, because I felt as if I had to put in a million times more effort to get a good result. This fear followed me into my adult life, where it pushed me harder than ever. 

As an adult, I was no longer subject to standards set by academia, and I could choose my own goals. Yet, I I still failed failure, and this time, it was a failure of my own definition. During my twenties and thirties, I set a number of goals. Some I hit, and some I didn’t. With every perceived failure, I grew more discouraged, and I shrunk what I believed I was capable of.

It was years before I realized that I had shrunk my goals smaller and smaller, due to to fear of failure. I would set goals that I knew I could reach easily, and stay far away from those where there was even a chance of failure. I would not start projects where there was even a shadow of possibility that I would not finish strong. And every goal I set that I didn’t reach made me set smaller and smaller goals. 

I should say here - there is nothing wrong with small goals, and in fact, using small goals actually helped me overcome my fear of failure.

But I realized that I had become so paralyzed by the thought of failure that I stopped dreaming.

I stopped striving for any kind of change or goal that challenged me even a little bit.

This continued until my late thirties, when something happened. The person I feel like described it well was Dr Brene Brown and her writing about the Midlife Unraveling. Here is a quote from that piece.

Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.

And while the jury may be out on whether late thirties/early forties falls into the category of “midlife” I can say for sure that as I approached my 40th birthday, I got it in my head that I was going to start my blog one more time - a goal that I felt like I had started working on and failed numerous times. Writing the 39 posts seemed daunting, but it also felt like exactly what I should be doing, and was the type of goal that I could break down into one step at a time.

And it was during that process that I realized - I get to define success, and I get to define failure.

I wrote about it (you can read it here) and here is an excerpt:

I (used to feel) as if anything less than the finished product was failure, and that only the finished product – exactly as I wanted it to be – was success. This year, I came to discover what a dangerous thought process that was for me.

Firstly because it meant that if I wasn’t careful, I would designate every road bump along the way as a failure. Every time I sat down in front of the computer and my mind felt blank. Every time I set myself a deadline that I did not reach. Even now – when I thought I would have that shiny copy (of my book) in my hands already, and yet due to setbacks I never anticipated, it isn’t here, I felt as if I had failed when the simple truth is that it isn’t finished, and that these “roadblocks” are simply a part of the process.

These thoughts of failure can cause me to procrastinate, lose motivation, and sometimes weep openly. Fear of failure is something that my friend and many others have sited as the reason they have not begun many of their journeys, and it is a real shame. I needed to learn to accept the stumbling blocks as landmarks on the journey I am taking, and not let them cause me to turn back, or abandon the journey.

One of the big parts of doing that for me, was also redefining success. Instead of waiting until I had that finished product in my hand, I needed to define success as writing every day. As reaching landmarks such as 500 words, as opposed to waiting until I reached 50,000. As not giving up when I wanted to. As taking a break when I needed it. As enjoying the process. These may not sound like big achievements, but the truth is that my confidence was built by appreciating these little successes, and making myself celebrate them, even more than it was built by focusing on the end result.

The truth is – things don’t always go according to the plan, and sometimes things are outside of my control. I had to come up with different ways to propel myself forward. 

It isn’t finished. This is something I get to remind myself of when I think that I have failed.

And this process of realizing that I could define what success was changed how I set and approached my goals. I lowered the stakes, and I used an accumulation of small wins. I started to dream again, and I was even able to realize some of these dreams.

Understanding my fear and learning my own workarounds made it possible for me make a number of changes that I really wanted to in life. As I mentioned previously - I am not an expert. I am not claiming to be the master of change. However I no longer feel paralyzed when I think of making change. Instead, I am more likely to wade in and figure out what is possible. 

That in itself has been the best change of all.

I would love to know - what fears hold you back from making change in your life? Have you found ways to work with (or around) those fears, and make the changes you wanted? How do you define success and failure in your goals, and is it working for you? And what is one thing in your life which you are proud of changing?

And I send you big love from a small island.

PS we have some of the most stunning sunsets here in October. The photo for this post is one that I took in October a couple of years ago, and a reminder to me that clouds make the most beautiful sunsets.