Episode 9: What Do We Do With The Fear of Failure?

This week I want to talk about what we do with the fear of failure.

It’s so so important that we address this as an elephant in the room for anyone who is contemplating doing something new or putting themselves out there in any way with their ideas or work. At some stage or another in our lives, our businesses or in our attempts at creating, we’ve all felt the sting of failure or disappointment.

-       Something hasn’t quite taken off.

-       The thing you poured your soul into was met with crickets

-       The product you really believed in didn’t sell as well as you hoped.

-       The idea you have had for a lifetime suddenly seems to be happening for other people all around you.

-       We’ve all lost steam. We’ve all lost our nerve. We’ve all shut down and stopped.

This is the stuff of being human and we need to talk about it and normalise it just as much as we do the strategies and the reflective tasks we undertake when things are going well. Especially for women, failure feels personal. It feels overwhelming and daunting. It shuts us down, closes us up and stops us from moving forward because failure feels SO vulnerable and exposing. Often it feels like visceral rejection when things haven’t gone the way we hoped.

But - if we continue to try to hide from the things that aren’t going well, and bypass the hard feelings about the ways in which we feel things haven’t worked out we are going to miss out on a huge component of growth, of resilience building and of the courage honing muscles that it takes to life fully as a whole hearted person. To fail and just hide is to skip the most significant work that we can do as humans. To fail and learn is how we grow and evolve and develop empathy for ourselves and others.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hello. And welcome back to courage is calling, um, how is everybody done this week? And this episode, I want to talk about what we do with fear of failure. Duh. So, so, so important that we address this as a pretty big elephant in the room for anyone who's contemplating doing something new or putting themselves out there in any way with their ideas, for work, you know, at some stage or another in our lives.

And our businesses and inner attempts at creating we've all felt the sting of failure or disappointment, right. Something just hasn't quite taken off. Or the thing that you poured your soul into was met with, or the product that you really believed in just didn't sell as well as you hoped. The idea you had for a lifetime suddenly seems to be happening for people.

All around you and not you. And you know, you lose steam and lose your nerve and you shut down and you stop. Well, this is the stuff of being human, and we need to talk about it and normalize it just as much as we do all the other strategies and reflections that we undertake when things are going well.

And especially for women, failure feels really personal. It feels overwhelming and daunting. It can shut us down. It can close us up and stop us from moving forward because failure feels so vulnerable and so exposing. And it often feels like visceral rejection and things. Haven't gone the way that we hoped.

But if we continue to try to hide from the things that maybe aren't going well and bypass the hard feelings about the ways in which we think things haven't worked out, we're going to miss out on a huge component of growth, huge component. Of resilience, building courage, honing, um, and all it takes to live life fully and wholeheartedly.

So to feel, or for things to go wrong and to just hide is really to skip the most significant work that we can do as humans to feel and learn is how we grow and evolve and develop empathy for ourselves. And hopefully then for others, But when we deny the times where things have crashed or we try and swipe away the hard handful, full moments of discomfort, we are missing an opportunity to learn and to build and rebuild and grow.

So I want to in this app, so talk about just three aspects of failure that I feel are really significant and freeing, and can hopefully reframe a bit of our view on the disappointment. We fail into a liberating opportunity to understand ourselves, to understand the world around us and how we can meaningfully continue to build courageous lives.

Even when things don't work the way that we'd hoped. The first thing that I want to talk about is the importance of identifying high. The fear of failure shows up for us because this fear of failure is a huge deal. It is. And the effect it has on us is, is pretty powerful. Perceived fear of failure is what is stopping women from bringing their ideas and their products and their solutions and service into the world.

Just think. And sometimes I do just think about all of the amazing things, ideas that women have tucked inside of them that could really contribute to more goodness. More joy, more beauty, more awareness, more education, more compassion in the world that are not being revealed because we are afraid of a failure.

And so I want you to take some time and really, really hone in on how the fear of failure is showing up in your life. Is it in the hesitation of even looking into that thing that you've been ruminating over? Does it show up as perfectionism, so never been quite ready to put that thing out there for others to see or to hear about it and just endlessly editing it or polishing it up. Is it showing up as relentless calculation of numbers and followers and figures and statistics and metrics, you know, waiting for that magic number before you dip your toe into the thing that you feel really drawn to make or create, or do. All of this is really how the fear of failure is showing up.

And if any of those things connect, I want you to feel relieved in one sense, because there are so many of us that feel this way, but it really doesn't have to be. So have a fear of failure is not going away. It's not, again, this threat of failure is a tactic of our inner protector and our inner protector wants to keep us safe from emotional risks.

But how we view failure can be reframed to serve us better. So if we can try and view it differently as I'll line out in the next couple of points, then maybe we can be women who boldly try and are showing up and being true, even when it feels scary, knowing that it's actually more important to be loyal to our dreams and our desires than it is to our fears.

The second thing that I think is really important to talk about around failure is our expectations. When we set out to bring something to life in the world, often we are caught up in the high, right. We're caught up in the high and the what and the when and the details. And we often forget to reflect on what we want this offering, this thing to achieve.

We spend a lot of time working out the details of the other stuff was I given thought to our own expectations, our Rhonda, and when we forget to take that stuff into consideration and then things don't go to plan. We end up feeling really hijacked and really dejected and really thrown or deflated and something that I have been learning today over the last number of years, it's really managed my own expectations around whatever it is that I'm putting out into the world and to get comfortable with a BS level.

So for me, the base level of my expectations is about my loyalty to my idea. And affirming that I'm happy with having completed what I said I today. So my own satisfaction is a top of my expectation list. This trumps anything that comes next, how have I been treated my values? Have I worked hard at this that I put the time?

And I really took into consideration what will serve my community? Well, and once that simply asked once I know that that the base level of my expectations. With myself and how I have shown up for this is in place. I try to hold the rest of the expectations of the outcome, just a little less tightly.

Once I've decided that I'm happy with what I've done, what I put out there, then I'm more able to identify what kind of response or reaction I want to have from the things that I'm doing. The more secure that I can feel in the value of my work. Uh, naming the desires for impact that I can actually have.

Um, the more that I feel like I can be self-supportive by adding this into the eyesight of the people that I want to serve and connect with, it takes energy to do that. It really does. It takes energy to put yourself out there because. Um, marketing or talking about our offerings can be really tiring, can be exposing, but having no idea of our expectations or just having our expectations kind of swirling around and a massive like insecure ideas can really harm us because we haven't fully connected with our desires for items for this thing.

And it's a really important and worthy part of the process. Not something to be overlay. The final thing that I want to say about failure and my friends assistant game too. Is it everything we do every wrong turn, every tricky decision, every way that we hide, every time we choose to stop, every time we don't get the results that we wanted is simply just an opportunity to receive information.

Every time we put something out into the world and we get a response, whether it's, you know, air quotes, booed, but noisy, quiet. Busy slow. It's all just information. So learning this, that everything is just information has been a really significant, really liberating part of my visibility journey. And remembering this aspect has given me.

Real courage, actually, as I have decided to put my ideas there, as I have marketed my own offerings and continually, you know, chosen to show up for myself, truly everything we received back, it's not good. It's not bad. It's not Prius. It's not criticism. It's just information, just information. And it's up to us what we do with that information.

So if you've ever launched something to crickets or posted an idea that didn't take off. Or developed a product that didn't sell. It's not that the idea was bad. This is what I need you to know. It's not that what you had to offer wasn't valuable or interesting or good, the quiet response. It's just information.

And it's up to us to access and use that information wise. If our offering isn't connecting, it doesn't mean it's a failure. It might just mean that we need to collect more info. And these things that might immediately fail, like failure might just be an opportunity to get the info. You need to get your thing out there again in a way that those connect better.

So it might mean that you need more information about. You know the time of the month or the year that you're offering it. And it might mean that you need more information about the people that you're trying to reach. It might mean that you need more information about price points or about what kind of setup is accessible for people. It might mean you need to build more trust with your community or your audience base in order to connect, you know, in the way that you're expecting to, and this information isn't given to you. To shut you down and stop you like your inner protector or your ego would like it's given to you as a guest to sift through it and determine what you should do with it.

It's given to you to investigate and to see this. To build on rather than an it or an opportunity for you to quit. And if we can see this information as a way of shipping, what you do so that more people can connect with it and the way that you want them to, then we are absolutely exercising, recovery and resilience, and it means that our ego is not in the driving seat, the curiosity and how we can serve and add value is here's the thing.

When we look at things through this lens of failure, failure is just information. It kind of makes a threat of failure, less powerful. Of course, there are always going to be risks. When we decide to put ourselves out there and take steps to pursue something close to our hearts and their risk is real. And we have to deal with the real feelings of fear and discomfort.

Here's the thing, the other option. As to not do anything with the things we feel drawn to create or do, and the trade off for that as another type of discomfort. It's the discomfort of always wondering if we could have given that thing a go and it's the discomfort of maybe never feeling the fulfillment of trying, I guess, both paths lead to some sort of risk.

And I guess that's the word figuring out which one, because we're going to face discomfort either way, but hopefully you'll choose the one that gives you the chance to be loyal to yourself. Thanks for less than today. Um, I'd love for you to feel free to share this episode with anyone in your life. Feels frozen by the fear of failure.

And in the meantime, you can reach out to me with any of your own thoughts on this at three Instagram or email. I know that if you want to build courage in a deeper way, you'd be so welcome to join the assembly members community. It is open. This is my coaching community of women who are all on this courage building journey together.

Either way. Thanks again. And I'll see you next time.