Master Your Fear of Failure

If you’re afraid of taking chances, or trying something unproven, or even speaking up, you’re not alone. Fear of failure is something we all experience, for a variety of reasons—fear of embarrassing ourselves, being rejected, or feeling humiliated. And not all fear is bad; in fact, it often keeps us safe, protecting us from taking dangerous risks.

Yet fear can hold people back, particularly at work. Although workplace fears likely aren’t life-threatening, your brain responds in a similarly cautious manner, making it hard to apply for a new job or promotion, ask for a raise, or try a new project that hasn’t been proven.

There’s a reason everyone has an innate sense of fear, albeit in varying levels. But by changing your view of it, it’s possible to rebuild your confidence, even in stressful times.

Rejection Dysphoria

For certain individuals, fear of failure is amplified through “rejection dysphoria”: a heightened sensitivity and feeling of increased pain when dealing with rejection.

Ordinary minor setbacks, or small criticisms, are felt acutely, often leading to perceived irrational emotional outbursts, increased fear and worry, or a fight/flight/freeze reaction.

In the workplace, rejection dysphoria often leads to coping mechanisms like people-pleasing or perfectionism. Both of these can lead to overwhelm, overwork, and increased self-doubt.

If this sounds familiar, the good news is there are proven methods to help you cope with rejection dysphoria:

• Label the pattern. Recognizing and raising awareness about your fears of rejection helps to create some distance between you and the behavior. Naming the emotion by telling yourself something like This is rejection dysphoria calms down the nervous system and reduces the activity in the fight/flight/freeze part of the brain.
• Regulate the nervous system. You can lower your fear level by calming down your body and nervous system, and processing the emotion. Do this by deep breathing, box breathing (inhale – 4, hold – 4, exhale – 4, hold – 4), or by going for a brisk walk.
• Break the thought spiral. When dealing with rejection or failure at work, the mind often starts to spiral as it reviews what could have been done differently. Instead, calm your nervous system (using pattern labeling and breathing techniques), then break that inner spiral by asking yourself: What can I learn from this? How can I improve next time? What’s one action I can take now that helps? Action builds momentum, which calms your overactive thinking.
• Build self-trust. Often we feel more sensitive to rejection because we’re projecting other people’s feedback onto an image of ourselves. We can build stronger self-trust by having greater self-compassion, leaving us better equipped to handle tough criticism. Self-kindness, after a spike of rejection, can support you to rebuild self-trust and confidence.

Dichotomy Thinking

Fear of failure originates from “dichotomy thinking”: that is, believing in two extremes. One extreme is success, the other is failure. With this mindset, there is no room or space for the in-between; everything is either the ultimate success or the ultimate failure.

The brain looks for ways to simplify situations for future decision-making. By painting a highly negative picture of a situation and calling it a failure, your brain thinks it needs to protect you from a similar situation in the future.

In the workplace, dichotomy thinking can show up as analysis paralysis, avoidance of responsibility, blaming others, refusing to be proactive, or showing a highly competitive spirit (needing to be the one who succeeds).

Yet very rarely are situations quite so negative or positive—most are somewhere in between. For instance, you might be slightly disappointed with some parts of a project, but can recognize that other parts went smoothly.

If you feel yourself slipping into dichotomy thinking, try these tools:

• Practice continuum thinking. Instead of labeling everything as success or failure, shift your perspective to a continuum on a scale from 0 to 10. What worked well? What can be improved?
• Shift the bias. Our brains have a negative bias, which means we notice anything negative three times more than we do anything positive. This makes us more likely to focus on the mistakes rather than the successes. However, you can train your mind—through visualization, reframing, and shifting of perspective—to see both the negative and the positive. Once you do this, you will feel calmer and more confident the next time you’re in a similar situation.

Confidence is not the absence of fear, but the belief that you will be okay despite the fear.

• Separate outcome and identity. When you attach your identity and self-worth to the outcomes and results in your work, your self-belief and confidence will always fluctuate. Being able to understand that your identity is more than your job will bring a greater sense of inner confidence and self-trust.
• Focus on process, not goals. Dichotomy thinking is often related to goals, with a high emphasis on achieving goals and results, and very little on the process. Instead, pivot and focus on the process, and celebrate the wins of your actions rather than your results. This not only makes you feel more in control but also gets you out of the all-or-nothing mindset.
• Expand your timeline. Dichotomy thinking focuses on the immediate, giving you an extreme visualization of the situation. Instead, expand your timeline forward, and see what it will mean a year from now. Also, expand your timeline backward, looking at how far you’ve come and what you’ve already overcome.
• Take on an experimental mindset. Capture all the learnings from each work project or assignment, and view everything through the lens of experiments. Instead of taking rejection or failure personally, view failure as a learning point and a trampoline for further growth and development.

Fail Fast, Fail Forward

The truth is everyone faces failure or rejection at some point. Don’t let that stop you-instead try to see failure as something you can analyze and learn from. Here are some strategies to help you shift your perspective and view failure more as a building block than a roadblock.

• Fail fast. Exposure to more failure and rejection reduces the emotional impact. By acting quickly and learning fast, you develop muscles for coping. Failure is only paralyzing when you don’t take any action, and fear loses its power with more exposure, providing proof that you have survived tough situations already.
• Adapt a beginner mindset. Allow yourself to approach each new situation with a beginner’s mindset, curiosity, and eagerness to learn more about yourself and others through a new light. Have a thirst for feedback and improvement, instead of radical perfection.
• Build resilience. Each time you fail and then try again, you are building up inner resilience. You are proving to yourself that you can handle challenges, are persevering, and don’t give up easily.

Confidence is not the absence of fear, but the belief that you will be okay despite it. When you rewire your rejection dysphoria, change your habit of dichotomy thinking, and build an experimental mindset through failing fast, you can handle anything with self-compassion, and see future opportunities rather than closed doors.

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