A 2019 study looking at the work habits of 1000 employees found that nearly half of all employees believe that they could perform better at work if they were not worried about making mistakes. The study found that employees were hampered as much as 40% of the time by fear of failure. As a pastor and counselor, I have spent no small amount of time talking through past mistakes with those who lament their errors in judgement, missteps, wrong moves, and outright mistakes. It seems like the easiest thing to do in life sometimes is to carry our mistakes with us as torture tools.
I spend a lot of time working with people on how they talk to themselves in regards to falling short of their goals. “Self talk” is the counseling term referring to how we talk to ourselves (our inner voice). Many people use their inner voice to speak to themselves in a manner they would never talk to anyone else, especially when it comes to failure or mistakes. In fact, if they heard one of their children, friends, or even a stranger speaking to themselves in the same manner, they would undoubtedly object and argue that failure isn’t fatal.
I think this contrast in behavior rises from the source of our fear of failure. For many, the fear of failure rises from a fear of experiencing shame. People are afraid of embarrassment or feelings of judgement from others, which makes sense given the fact that we are social creatures and our acceptance in, and esteem from, the group of people around us has historically been connected to our survival and comfort in life. However, this element of survival instinct has outgrown most of its usefulness. While there is certainly value in shame and its partner modesty for enforcing social norms, many of which are healthy and good in general, there is little likelihood of starving to death or being eaten by wolves simply because we are less popular than we would like to be in life.
Beyond that, most of what we worry about experiencing shame over isn’t likely to produce much in the way of real shaming thoughts or judgements from others. My experience has been that people rarely look at the mistakes of others with more than passing awareness. Most people spend their mental bandwidth thinking about themselves. They are not all that invested in those around them. They don’t notice or remember the missteps of others. When they do think about those missteps, they don’t often do so with the degree of venom assumed by those who fear judgement. The person who remembers your mistakes most acutely and with the least amount of grace is usually you.
There are exceptions to this idea. When our errors cause significant harm or disruption to others, for example. In these instances, owning mistakes and doing your best to make amends is the best path forward. However, my experience has been that a small percentage of errors fall into this category. Another example is those individuals who inflate their own value by deflating the value of others or who love to harbor resentment/bitterness for some reason. These are people who have a broken component in their souls. Their desire to cast shame on you isn’t about you. Though it may be painful in the immediate experience, realizing that is what is happening is the first step to overcoming the associated difficulties.
The solution to overcoming fear of failure and the associated self-abusing talk that many engage in is found in a changed relationship with our understanding of what mistakes and failure are. We often see them as fatal or sources of shame. In reality, they are learning opportunities or steps on the path to success in life. Thomas Edison famously described his efforts at inventing the lightbulb by saying: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” In my own life, I have learned that praise is nice in the same way that sugar is nice. It is good to have it on occasion, and it tends to energize you. However, mistakes and criticism are useful. They show us where we need to improve and serve as a challenge for improving tomorrow’s work if we can only manage to not be so discouraged that we don’t show up out of shame over today’s performance. World class martial artist and author, Chris Bradford puts it well: “There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
A final thought that is worth expressing comes from President Theodore Roosevelt. In his 1910 speech ‘Citizenship in a Republic,” he shared what has become his most famous quote about the man in the arena: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
