As I was watching the USA basketball team on their way to a gold medal in the Olympics yesterday, the commentators said something that stuck out to me. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it went something like this: Is it joy on their faces, or relief? The commentator went on to say maybe it was a bit of both, after all, this was a team that wasn’t supposed to lose. So, yes, in a way, there was some relief in the fact that they didn’t lose when they weren’t expected to.
Which got me to thinking. Are we afraid of failing? And the answer is, of course we are. We’re afraid of failing at lots of things. It’s another of those learned fears that we aren’t born with. Watch any young child trying something, and you’ll notice that they fail several times before they finally get it right. Sometimes they just learn that something just doesn’t work that way, and find the way that it does work. If that square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole, they’ll eventually find the square hole that it goes in.
But, somewhere along the way, many of us gain a fear of failing. So much pressure and expectation is laid upon us to succeed, both by our parents and by society at large. No longer is it something where we’re learning something new (even though we usually are), but expected to get that new thing right on the first try. And, like the USA basketball team, when we do get it right, we are just as full of relief that we didn’t fail as we are full of joy that we succeeded.
Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
That quote is probably one of the most quoted lines of dialogue in the entire Star Wars series of movies. David Brin, a sci-fi author thinks that and many of the other actions of Yoda make him “about the most evil character that I’ve ever seen in the history of literature“. Why does Brin hate Yoda so much? It’s better if I let him say it:
unable to name for me one scene in which Yoda is ever helpful to anybody, or says anything that’s genuinely wise. “Do or do not, there is no try.” Up yours, you horrible little oven mitt! “Try” is how human beings get better. That’s how people learn, they try some of their muscles, or their Force mechanism heads in the right direction, that part gets reinforced and rewarded with positive feedback, which you never give.
I’ll repeat it for you. Trying is how people learn. When we try, and succeed, that’s positive feedback and that success is reinforced. When we try and fail, that’s negative feedback. We learn that the action we performed and failed is the wrong way to go about it, and then go about trying to find a new way to go about that action.
There’s also a very nice commercial that features Michael Jordan talking about how many times he’s missed shots, lost games, and been counted on to make the game winning shot and missed. He goes on to say that it’s because he failed all those times that he was as good as he was.
So. Why are you afraid of failing? Failure is a part of the learning process. It’s how we learn how things work, what methods will succeed, and how we make ourselves better. Don’t be afraid of failure. Be afraid of not trying.
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I’m ridiculously afraid of failure; not on a day to day level but on an epic, large scale level. If I ever looked back on my life and felt like I was a failure, I don’t know that I could deal. Luckily for my sanity, I’m also a firm believer in never messing up in the same way twice. In other words, if I’m going to fail (in a small way), I might as well learn from it. In fact, that’s probably a more accurate way to describe my fear of failure – I’m not scared of making mistakes, because I do it all the time; I’m scared of failing to learn from them.
Nice post! This really got me thinking.
I think I have been afraid of failing my whole life. I find myself in situations where I MUST prevail and I think I put myself there to push through.
I can’t believe he called Yoda a horrible little oven mitt. That’s hilarious ….
I think its an ego thing. If you never had to hear about it or be made fun of, people would try and fail all the time. But our society is a place where we mock and ridicule the failures of others (most of what is on TV today), so people try not let others see their weaknesses. Its too bad because we would learn a lot more about ourselves and our capabilities if we were allowed to fall gracefully more often.
Love the Yoda quote. It is easy to be afraid to fail, but the only way to make progress is to try anyway.
I know as a recovering perfectionist how difficult trying and failing can be. I was stuck in “information consumption mode” for a long time because of that fear.
@Andrea You know, I was thinking of you when I put that image in the post. Not because I think you do a good job of pretending to be a success, but because you seem to find all the good ones like it all the time. I too am afraid of total failure, but as I age, I’m realizing that even the most total failure is often something that we can recover from.
@Jai I think we all do that to some degree. It’s almost easier to “try” if we don’t have a choice.
@My Money Design I think that’s what made the quote stick in my mind! For sure, society makes a mockery of those that do fail, so it’s become even more taboo to fail.
@Eric Absolutely right.
@Stephanie You too? I’ve got projects that are still in “information consumption mode”!
I don’t think I ever worry about failing, but I have a nervousness when I embark on something new. I let that nervousness motivate me to do better. I do it by preparing more to reduce the nervousness. I think it is a good way to approach new situations.
I am worried about failing but took a risk and decided to try my hand at blogging? Has my blog been a failure? Not yet, but even if it does end up a failure I have learned a ton that I could apply to my next blog!
There’s a saying that if someone says they tried and didn’t succeed then don’t believe them. Meaning don’t believe that they tried hard enough. Either you do it or you don’t.
Let’s not forget the greatest leaders of all time who failed: Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, and even Michael Jordan 🙂
@Krant I think that’s a good way to deal with that nervousness. It makes it productive!
@Lance I think that’s what makes failure something that you don’t need to fear. Think of all the things we learn in our lifetimes by failing.
@Ornella I think that sometimes people can try hard, but don’t know how far they can really go. Sometimes, it takes a failure to truly learn how far one can go. See my post on 8/15/12 (tomorrow as I’m writing this) for why I believe that is so.
@Kevin I had thought about adding those three into the list in the post, but began to feel like I would end up sounding like a run on sentence.
I think we’re all a little afraid of failure. I know it stops me from doing some things that I might like to do. But anything that is truly important to me, I’d like to think that I get past it and try. Although maybe a fear of failure is what makes me give up.