once had someone ask me what I was most afraid of. I said television screens in the dark, swimming pool sharks and dead things but they meant rational fears like dying or losing loved ones. I think being scared of death and being scared of swimming pool sharks are much of a muchness because they both end in the same way but whatever. Rationally speaking, I’m not afraid of much. I can speak in public, I don’t mind meeting new people and I’m totally fine with creepy crawlies as long as they aren’t on me.
One thing I’ve always struggled with though is my fear of failure. I hate failing. I love learning and trying new things but there’s always a risk of failure when venturing into the unknown and failure makes my chest hurt. It physically feels like someone is squishing my heart in their hand. It hurts more depending on how much effort I’ve put in. I know I’m not unique – most people are scared of failing but I’m scared of it more than spiders, murderers and drowning. It’s my kryptonite.
The one thing that has made me better at dealing with failure is actually experiencing it. Acting has been a huge help with this. I’ve always acted in plays, ever since I was about fourteen years old and I’ve probably done over a hundred auditions in my life. I’ve performed in about forty plays, most of which I didn’t audition for. The maths on this works out to about ninety failed auditions. Ninety. That’s ninety times someone as literally said ‘You aren’t good enough/thin enough/pretty enough to be in our show. K tnx bai.’
It’s pretty fucking rough.
Professionally, I’ve managed to place myself in the same regular-rejection boat. I’m a writer and I’ve had more articles rejected than I’ve had accepted. Actually most of my articles haven’t even been officially rejected. They just floated out into the literary ether where all the other unpublished works swim around in a wasteland of purgatory. It’s the only time I ever actually crave rejection. It’s so much better than silence.
Despite how much practice I have at being told I’m shit, I’m still not very good at the whole failure thing. The panic about failing will often start before I’ve even done a thing. This is why I’ve never broken a bone or been to hospital. Risk-aversion is one of the things I’m good at. For example, I’ve never ridden a skate board because I really like my skin and I don’t need to see it in a four hundred metre long smear down the street. I also don’t need to be good at skateboarding, so there’s no point in wasting my failure moments on being crap at something I already know I’ll be crap at. I don’t want to waste my failure capacity on something that will not in anyway improve my life, move me closer towards my goals or bring me joy. Careening down the footpath on a wheeled death board doesn’t bring me anywhere near the enjoyment I get from sitting down, so I’m taking a permanent pass on the skateboard situation and saving my failure fighting strength for something that matters.
And yes, rejections of things that matter hurt the most. The higher the stakes the worse it hurts. This is why you need to constantly practice. All the time. I practice failure every day on this blog – I write five posts per week and sometimes a few thousand people will read a post and sometimes tens of thousands of people will read it. Sometimes I’ll get one comment and sometimes I’ll get two hundred comments. I can’t let my fear of a failed post stop me from blogging. There are over three thousand posts on this blog – that’s three thousand chances I’ve given myself to fail and three thousand times I’ve got better at not caring. I still care… but I care a lot less.
This is why being scared of failure is such a huge waste of time because you need to do it often to get better at it. It’s tough and it sucks but it’s the only way to fight through.
Today, I want you to go out and get rejected. Do something you’ve been too scared to do. If you fail – awesome. You’ve just flexed your fail guns and the next time you fail, it will hurt a lot less. If you succeed… you’ve still failed the task I set for you so well done. It’s a win win situation.
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Are you paralysed by fear of failure or do you cope well with it? What do you save your failure fighting strength for?
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