How to Overcome Fear of Failure

Fear of failure is a misnomer.

As I’ll explain in a minute, most people don’t fear failure itself, but something much more internal and emotional in nature.

As a psychologist, I’ve worked with hundreds of smart, hard-working, and very successful individuals who were plagued by near-constant self-doubt and fear of failure despite impressive collections of past achievements and successes.

And here’s what I’ve noticed about the ones who successfully overcame their fear of failure: They all learned to shift their perspective and see their fear of failure as something entirely different than they initially imagined.

In the rest of this article, I’m going to explain how the psychology behind fear of failure really works, and how you can use that psychology to overcome your own fear of failure for good.

The Anxious Achiever’s Dilemma

Ironically, people who struggle with fear of failure are often pretty high-achieving and successful:

Successful business professionals and entrepreneurs with years of achievements; and yet… they continue to struggle with imposter syndrome and worry that failure is always right around the corner.
Successful athletes and performers who have competed and achieved at the highest levels; and yet… they still feel insecure about being a disappointment to their parents, coaches, or fans.
Successful creators and artists with incredible portfolios of work; and yet… they continue to be plagued by self-doubt and that gnawing feeling that the next piece is sure to be a flop.

But why is this? After all, you would think that all those successes and achievements would make them less afraid of failure, not more.

In my own work, I hear this frustration echoed all the time from my clients:

I know intellectually that I’m not a failure. And chances are I won’t be. It’s just that I feel like a failure and I’m constantly afraid that I’m going to fail.

The key thing to notice in sentiments like this is between outcomes (“I’m not a failure. And chances are I won’t be.”) and feelings (“I feel like a failure and I’m constantly afraid.”). Of course, being aware of this distinction is precisely why fear of failure is so frustrating in addition to being anxiety-inducing: It doesn’t make sense!

Or it doesn’t seem to anyway…

If we dig a little deeper into the actual experience of fear of failure, I think you’ll find that it does in fact make a lot of sense. And the first step is to understand the psychology behind how fear—and its counterpart, confidence—really work.

Here’s the big idea:

Confidence is not the absence of fear. It’s the belief that you’ll be okay despite your fear.

Think about it:

An olympic gymnast isn’t confident because she’s not afraid. Talk to any olympian and they’ll tell you they have plenty of fear and anxiety before a performance. She’s confident because she’s repeatedly put herself in scary situations and done the difficult thing despite feeling afraid. That includes, by the way, the hundred or thousands of practice sessions that were failures. All that experience has developed into confidence—the belief that she’ll be okay and perform despite feeling afraid.
Similarly, professional musicians aren’t confident because they’re not afraid of going on stage and singing or playing in front of thousands of people. Many continue to be terrified despite decades of performing. But what they’ll all tell you in one form or another is that, despite the fear, they do it anyway. And because they’ve repeatedly put themselves in that situation and learned that they can tolerate the fear and perform well despite it, they’ve developed confidence, which is not so much a feeling as a belief built up through experience.

So, the first lesson when it comes to overcoming fear of failure is this:

Don’t interpret fear as a lack of confidence.

Everyone has fears, anxieties, and insecurities. What confident people know—and believe—is that it’s okay to be afraid. And despite not liking their fear, they’re willing to have it and do what matters anyway.

Now, at this point you might be thinking something like:

Okay, what you said about confidence not being the absence of fear makes sense. But it’s not like I don’t already do things that are scary or anxiety-producing. So why haven’t I developed more confidence?

It’s true. People with fear of failure frequently do scary things…

The anxious CEO giving another speech in front of the whole company
The self-doubting author submitting yet another book proposal
The college professor standing up in front of a new class for the twentieth year in a row

So why isn’t their confidence growing in response to these challenges they seek out and typically succeed at?

Turns out, what distinguishes insecure high-achievers (who frequently struggle with fear of failure) from confident high-achievers has everything to do with the motivation behind their drive to achieve…

A Tale of Two Achievers

Consider two different individuals:

Both are VPs for large, well-respected consulting firms.
Both are in their early 40s and have quickly risen the ranks thanks to a lot of hard work, creative decision-making, and a willingness to take on challenging projects when no one else would.
Both have similar temperaments and personalities: Friendly and personable but also highly analytical, conscientious, and remarkably hard-working.
They each have roughly equivalent histories of success, are universally admired by their peers, and both are being seriously considered for top leadership positions in their respective firms.

But despite these similarities, they differ in one key dimension:

The first individual, Marcus, is almost constantly afraid of failing and frequently doubts himself. Though he seems confident and put together on the outside, he would tell you that inside he’s frequently anxious and “in knots.”
The second, Danielle, has moments of stress and anxiety, but feels calmly confident in her abilities and future. Unlike Marcus, Danielle’s internal state of “quiet confidence” matches her external appearance of “relaxed strength.”

But how could this be when both individuals had such similar traits and experiences, including a long history of taking on very difficult challenges despite feeling afraid?

Turns out…

People with fear of failure tend to share a subtle but powerful habit: They use hard work and achievement as a way to avoid their fears and insecurities.

If you could peer inside her head, Danielle’s habit of taking on challenges (and usually succeeding) is what psychologists would call positively reinforced. She’s primarily motivated by the addition of positive feeling—the pride of a job well done, the joy of seeing her skills and abilities improve over time, the raw pleasure of having people you admire acknowledge your successes.

But if you could look inside Marcus’s head, his habit of taking on challenges (and usually succeeding) is what psychologists would call negatively reinforced. He’s primarily motivated by the reduction in aversive feeling—the temporary relief from his fears of not measuring up to his successful father, the hope that the next big achievement will be the one to silence his self-doubt and negative self-talk, the distraction from melancholy and sadness that comes from being constantly busy with work and projects.

As we’ve seen, both forms of motivation work in the sense that they lead to incredible levels of drive, hard work, and very often, success. The trouble is, one of them—fear-based motivation—makes you miserable and insecure because it erodes confidence instead of generating it.

And the reason comes down to another concept from psychology: Emotional Fear Learning

Emotional fear learning is when your brain learns to fear its own emotions because, by repeated emotional avoidance, you’ve trained it to believe they are threats.

For example:

Suppose every time you feel anxious, you immediately take out your phone and start scrolling social media as a way to avoid the anxiety.
While you might get some short-term relief from the anxiety, long-term your anxiety will only increase because what your brain sees and learns is that you think anxiety is dangerous since you’re running away from it.
This means the next time anxiety pops up, it feels more intense, which will motivate you even more quickly to avoid the anxiety.
You can see how a pretty vicious cycle emerges. This is the same vicious cycle, by the way, that underlies addiction of any kind… Feel bad, use something (or someone) to alleviate the pain, feel good briefly but worse long-term, need a pain reliever even more, etc…

Now, let’s see how this process applies to our anxious high-achiever, Marcus…

Like many anxious high-achievers, Marcus learned from a young age that studying extra hard helped him avoid the shame of doing less than perfect at school and living up to some pretty high expectations of the adults in his life.
This habit continued into adulthood where Marcus continued using hard work to avoid the fear and shame he imagined would come from being less than perfect—as a student, as an employee, even as a husband and father.
But all the while, Marcus is teaching his brain that it’s not okay to feel anxious or ashamed because he keeps avoiding those feelings by diving into work anytime they come up.
As a result—and despite all the accomplishments Marcus is accumulating—his anxiety continues to rise and his confidence sink. Not in his ability to succeed, of course… Like most anxious high-achievers with fear of failure, Marcus doesn’t really think he’s going to fail in any meaningful sense of the term. What he’s really afraid of—and lacks confidence in his ability to manage—is anxiety itself.
Because he’s learned to use hard work as a way to avoid his difficult emotions like anxiety and shame, he’s deprived himself of the opportunity to practice managing them in a healthy way as well as all the confidence that comes from such practice. And it’s this lack of emotional confidence that’s at the heart of his seemingly paradoxical fear of failure.
Marcus isn’t afraid of failing. He’s afraid of feeling.

Now, at this point, things might seem pretty bleak for our friend Marcus. After all, he’s had a lifetime of conditioning to be afraid of his fear. And what’s more, he’s not even aware of the real problem… He still thinks he’s afraid of failing, when the truth is much closer to something like this: He’s afraid of feeling like a failure, or being seen as one. It’s the avoidance of anxiety and shame that’s making him insecure, not his imagined failures.

So, is there any hope for Marcus?

Absolutely!

Having worked with a lot of Marcuses in my career, I can confidently say that the vast majority of them are able to overcome their fear of failure—which, remember, is really fear of the anxiety that comes with imagining failure.

What’s more, these individuals often make quicker progress than they imagine—in part because really understanding the psychology behind fear of failure is half the battle. And the other half, while not easy, is something anyone can do if they’re willing to put in a modest amount of effort and persistence—two qualities which, thankfully, nearly all high-achievers have in spades.

3 Habits to Overcome Fear of Failure

Before I wrap up, I want to leave you with a handful of practical ways to start working through your fear of failure. Because while insight and understanding the real cause of your fear of failure is important, it’s not enough. You need consistent action.

Just like reading books about health and wellbeing won’t magically make you stronger and more fit, understanding your psychology won’t magically make you more confident and resilient.

For that, you need to start doing things differently. Slowly but surely building new habits that will retrain your brain to see fear and anxiety not as threats but as well-intentioned parts of you who are simply trying to help.

Here are three of my favorite habits that will do just that.

1. Validate your fears instead of running from them

Validation is the simple act of reminding yourself that, despite not liking how you feel, it’s normal, okay, and probably makes sense.

For example:

If you’re nervous before giving a talk or speech, you might remind yourself: Yes, I’m super nervous, but that’s okay. I don’t love feeling like this, but everyone gets nervous sometimes. Nerves are just my body giving me a little adrenaline to help me perform at my best.
Or let’s say you’ve got a new idea you want to share with your team, but you’re anxious they’ll think it’s dumb. In that case, you might validate your anxiety by saying something like this: Proposing a new, creative idea is always risky. Realistically, it could turn out to be a bad idea. And because I do care about this, it’s understandable that I would feel anxious. But I want to be the kind of person who is willing to be courageous and take risks, so I’m going to share it anyway.

Critically, validation is not a coping mechanism designed to alleviate anxiety. It’s an exercise designed to retrain your brain to see anxiety as safe, not threatening.

So don’t expect it to make you feel less anxious in the moment. The goal is to be willing to feel anxious and do something important anyway. That’s the only way to feel less anxious in the long run.

Developing the skill of emotional validation is a powerful way to do that.

Learn More: How to Validate Your Emotions →

2. Take up a hobby. (Yes, seriously, get a hobby.)

Failure is an opportunity to practice tolerating fear and anxiety. Which as we’ve seen, is the only path to genuine confidence and long-term relief from fear of failure.

Now, I’m not suggesting you deliberately fail on some big client project. Or willfully be a jerk to your partner so you can practice failing at being a good spouse.That would be dumb.

But how about this: Sign up for a knitting class.

Yes, you, Mr. super important and busy business executive. Or you Ms. I don’t have time for nonsense like this partner at a law firm. Deliberately become a beginner at something you’re not already good at but find meaningful or enjoyable. Be willing to suck at something so you can make mistakes and practice accepting your anxiety instead of avoiding it. And perhaps more importantly, get used to taking on a challenge simply because you want to, not as a means of avoiding your fears and insecurities.

Of course it doesn’t have to be knitting…

Join a weekly pickup basketball game.
Learn to bake sourdough.
Fix up your old 10-speed bike.
Take a dancing class with your partner.
Sign up for piano lessons.

Just remember, the whole point is to practice two things:

Doing something challenging and meaningful for its own sake, simply because it will be meaningful or fun.
Being willing to feel anxious and afraid—of how you’ll perform, of what other people will think, or that you’ll just fail outright—and doing something worthwhile but challenging anyway.

3. Reflect on your values

Remember that the hallmark of anxious high-achievers who struggle with fear of failure is fear-based motivation—using hard work and challenge as a way to avoid insecurities and anxieties, which paradoxically only strengthens those insecurities and anxieties in the long-term and decreases confidence.

If you want to stop running away from your fears, it helps to understand what you want to run toward instead.

And while the previous habit of cultivating a meaningful hobby will help inject some joy-based motivation into your life, it’s even more helpful to understand your personal values—the principles or ideals that matter most to you and that, when you’re clear on them, give direction and motivation to your choices and decisions.

Now, everybody has values. If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’d say that you value courage, honesty, compassion, etc.

The problem is most people have never spent much time deeply reflecting on their values and clarifying them—which is why they tend not to be very helpful in real life.

But… deeply considered and clarified values are one of the most positively powerful forces in all of human psychology, in large part because they motivate us to move toward the things that really matter in life.

So, how do you get started with a task as potentially daunting or abstract as reflecting your values?

A wonderful little exercise is to keep an Admiration Diary:

Buy a little notebook—or create a notes file on your phone called Admiration Diary.
Now, sit down for 10-15 minutes someplace quiet with a nice cup of coffee or tea and your notebook.
List 3-5 people in your life whom you deeply admire.
Then, for each person, jot down a few notes as to what specifically you admire about them. These could be traits or qualities like creative or disciplined. But ideally you want to describe your admiration at the level of action and behavior. That is, what specifically do they do (or have done) that earns your admiration?
Once you’ve done this initial brainstorming, carve out a few minutes each week and repeat the same exercise for a new person whom you admire.
Do this for a month, and you will be shocked at how much more depth and clarity you have on what your own values are because what we admire in others is usually a reflection of what we value ourselves.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to begin contemplating your values more deeply. And once you do, there’s still the matter of reminding yourself of them and keeping them top of mind as you make choices and act.

But if you want to stop running away from your fear of failure, and start living your life moving forward, this is simply first step of contemplating your personal values is as powerful as it is simple.

Learn More: How to Clarify Your Values →

All You Need to Know

Let’s review what’s we’ve covered:

Fear of failure is a misnomer because what we really fear (and lack confidence in) is our ability to handle the emotions associated with our imagined failure—typically anxiety and shame.
Don’t interpret fear as a lack of confidence.
Insecure high-achievers lack confidence and fear failure because their motivation to work hard is primarily negatively reinforced—motivated by the avoidance of painful emotion and experience. Confident high-achievers maintain confidence because their hard work is primarily positively reinforced—motivated by the addition of enjoyable emotion and experience.
People with fear of failure aren’t really afraid of failing—they’re afraid of feeling.
The way to overcome fear of failure is to practice being willing to experience fear and anxiety instead of avoiding it with more hard work, which is the hallmark of the insecure high-achiever.
Three habits which help build true confidence and overcome fear of failure include: Validate your fears instead of running from them; Taking up a hobby and practicing tolerating the fear and shame of failure willingly instead of avoiding it; Reflecting on your personal values.