We’re All Failures – Embrace It

Too much of our time is spent dreaming about living a better life – having a better job, a better salary, more time for ourselves and our families, living in a better house or a nicer part of town – versus too little of our time spent acting to achieve it.  There are any number of reasons why this might be the case (that I will happily help you with if you want to drop me a line), but perhaps the biggest of them is FAILURE, and that’s the one I’d like to talk about today.

Failure is a Bitch

This, right?  It hurts in the moment, and stings in the aftermath.  It can be seemingly inconsequential, or downright traumatic; it can go unnoticed, or be very public.  It doesn’t matter, because regardless of its scale we feel it.  Failure can trigger deep emotional distress, anxiety and even plunge us into states of depression. As a result of all this unpleasantness we develop an understandable aversion to it.

Fundamentally, we are animals, and our instincts are designed to protect us from threats, with the aim of prolonging our survival.  Often, our fear of failing is so intense we treat it as a survival issue, as life or death.  Thus, we avoid failure – lest it kill us.  This is unhelpful.  It’s an irrational narrative in this day and age that stops us taking steps toward the life we’re dreaming of.

Nothing in life is certain, so when we are confronted with uncertainty our choices are either to act or do nothing.   Doing nothing guarantees you arrive at some default reality you’ve exerted no control over. Action takes you closer to the reality you want - every step after the first is an iteration based on your learnings - i.e., the failures - expanding your awareness and bringing you closer to the place you want to be.

For years I subscribed to the mantra: Never pick a fight you can’t win.  It sounded sensible at the time and served to trap me in an existence I was deeply unhappy with.  Then, my coach called me on my bullshit, highlighting that this was just another way of saying, ‘don’t try because you’ll fail,’ a philosophy that was stunting my personal and professional growth and showing me an uncomfortable truth behind the curtain: the limiting beliefs I held about myself and my own capability.

At that point I took a gamble and changed careers taking a financial step back in the process. I made more progress in the next 2 years than I had in the previous 10, and I’ve done nothing but develop my momentum since.

My relationship with risk and failure changed for the better after that realisation.

Failure Avoidance is an Unhelpful Bias

Our confidence and resilience in the face of failure is underpinned by three principles:

·      Risk Aversion – our tolerance for uncertainty

·      Loss Aversion – our tolerance of the emotional impact of failure

·      Attribution – the story we tell ourselves about ourselves when we do fail.

As I spend a lot of time working with prospective job seekers let’s frame it in that context (but it is by no means confined to this scenario), as career changes and job hunting can be quite the test of resilience.

Many job hunters frequently avoid putting themselves out there because they have a low appetite for risk and a low tolerance for failure. They know they want a new career, but they can’t seem to get moving. In reality, throwing your hat in the ring for a new role says more about your self-belief and risk appetite than your ability to actually do the job, but we don’t recognise this. Instead, we create excuses to justify backing out: I don’t meet all the criteria, I don’t have time to make a good application, this isn’t the perfect set of circumstances I was looking for.  What we really mean is: I’m afraid I will fail.  Our reasons for avoiding failure are linked to our beliefs about what will happen if (and more likely when) we do fail.

Catastrophe! Carnage! Chaos!

Alternatively, we might throw ourselves right in the mix and apply for role after role, suitable or not.  And we get rejected for all of them, and with each new failure we double down on the negative attribution that – instead of there being a flaw in our approach, or noise in the application process – it’s because we’re simply not good enough.

Human beings have a natural negativity bias – we feel the losses more than the wins; we sit with them longer.  This goes back to instinct, it goes back to survival.  Anticipation of failure is a negative experience in of itself, powerful enough to stop us even trying in the first place.  Logically we know that failure is a part of life, that it’s crucial for learning.  It’s ok for others to fail, and we tell them this stuff when they do, but when it comes to usthe emotion can’t keep pace with the logic and we back down.

Failure challenges our self-perceptions; it forces us to see ourselves through the eyes of others and anticipate their judgement.  It pricks the skin of a too-common and insidious limiting belief – which is, ‘I’m not good enough’ – and what bleeds out is our self-belief.

When high levels of risk and loss aversion, coupled with negative attributions rob us of our confidence, we can experience a crippling kind of psychological inertia that stops us taking action.  We know we should, but we can’t and so we give our time to doom scrolling and busywork instead.

Failure is an Opportunity to Become a Better You

In addition to a natural negativity bias, we have a natural confirmation bias – our mental filters are constantly seeking to confirm the beliefs we hold about ourselves to be true. So, if that belief is, ‘I’m not good enough,’ our minds will look for ways to uphold it.

Except it’s not true – you are good enough, and you are not alone in falling short of your goals. However, sometimes you are at the mercy of other people and their hang ups and issues too; you are at the mercy of flawed processes riddled with unconscious bias. You can be the most skilled and attentive driver on the road, and you will still be at the mercy of others who are less diligent and attentive.

This means your journey can always be disrupted by external factors.

It's easy to say, but we should never take a failure personally. No one among us will get through a life of any considerable term without failing again and again.  Learning how to deal with failure is one of life’s most valuable lessons, and one best learned at a young age.  People who are more resilient in the face of failure are not hindered by the ‘I’m not good enough’ belief.  They don’t wait for a raft of perfect conditions to set sail on their journey. As such, they can consider failure rationally and see it as an opportunity to get better rather than a reinforcement of inadequacy.

Carol Dweck’s theory of the Growth Mindset is often referenced here, and for good reason.  Possessing a Growth Mindset means approaching failures and setbacks from a position of learning, which is the best approach to take.  It is based on the idea that are resources are not fixed, we can continue to grow. Reflect on your experience, get feedback if it’s available, work with someone to help you process it objectively.  Possessing a fixed mindset means defining yourself as a failure and not accepting that change is possible.

It is, but it takes work.

Remember: If you don’t get the job, or you mess up the exam, or you fall short of your goals, the only person judging you is you.  Other people are not paying as much attention to you as you may believe.  Get over yourself ;) Don’t catastrophise or make it a bigger deal than it needs to be. Recognise it for what it is: anopportunity.

If we recognise that failure is inevitable; that we all do it; that it is an opportunity to better ourselves, we begin to sand off its sharp emotional edges, allowing it to fit into our lives more comfortably, like another piece of the puzzle.

And if anyone is judging you for trying and failing remember that it comes from a place of envy; because a) you had the courage to put yourself out there in the first place; and b) because you’ve set yourself on a journey of growth and they haven’t.

It's because they too are afraid of failing - offer them help!