GOOD HEALTH & WELLBEING MAGAZINE
If at first you don’t succeed – you might fail. If that prospect freaks you out, you’re not alone. Trudie McConnochie looks at how to move through fear of failure so you can live your best life.
He was being flippant, but when TV character Homer Simpson declared that ‘trying is the first step towards failure’ it’s likely that many people nodded in agreement. A 2015 US survey of more than 1000 people found that fear of failure was higher than a fear of spiders or even the paranormal, proving many of us struggle to try anything new – be it an ambitious work project, putting yourself ‘out there’ in the dating world or even adopting a dramatic hair colour– where success is not guaranteed.
When it comes to facing down fear of failure, innovation educator Gauri Bhalla lives by the words not of Homer Simpson but of literary phenomenon J. K. Rowling. Given that the Harry Potter manuscript was rejected 12 times before getting published, it’s fair to say she knew what she was talking about when she stated: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” Still, fear of failure can be utterly crippling for many of us, on both professional and personal levels.
Gauri, who teaches a class called ‘How to Fail’ at The School of Life in Sydney, recalls, “I was working with an organisation and they said, ‘We don’t use the F word.’ But you can’t do anything unless you get over that [fear of failure]! You will sit in your box, you will be scared to do anything, and you will never make changes. That was the lightbulb moment when I realised people don’t talk about this stuff – it’s shameful.”
Download article to read more.