Monday Motivation 7/8/24

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Overcoming Failure: Part 2

Last week, we started a series on something I think is so important it’s worth a series: The fear of failure.

It holds so many of you back, and my goal is to help you conquer it.

The last email showed you how to evaluate the risks of failure honestly.

I hope you did your homework and that your fear lost some of its power when you completed your risk assessment.

I also know there is another fear that comes with failure. No, you won’t die. Yes, you’ll probably be right back where you started instead of falling off a cliff like you imagined.

But we are social creatures, and even once you realize you’ll be safe, you’re probably horrified of being embarrassed of taking a big swing and missing.

This is why the second step to conquering your fear of failure is being very honest with yourself.

And when you are honest, you will realize that almost no one will care. 

You are not the main character in a movie. There is very little embarrassment in failure because the reality is that 99.99% of the world will never know you failed. And the people who do know are almost certainly dealing with their own failures and challenges and don’t have time to think about you. 

Sure, a few of them may enjoy some schadenfreude. A few might laugh at you. How does that hurt you? Why should you care about people who were rooting against you, anyway?

Why should you spend a second thinking about someone who is that negative? This is why I always tell you to ignore the naysayers.

I promise your fear of being embarrassed is completely overblown. 

But I realize that it might be hard for you to really understand this, so I have some homework that will allow you to test it very quickly!

Pick something that takes about 30 seconds that you’ve been wanting to do. Maybe it’s a new PR on your favorite lift. Maybe it’s one of those hard online word puzzles. Maybe it’s a pull-up or a push-up. Maybe it’s a new level of chess.

Set up your phone to take a picture or video. Do the thing you’ve chosen. But this time, don’t hold back. Go all out. Tell yourself you don’t give a single shit if you can’t do it; you’re trying your absolute best.

If you do it, great! Brag on social media if you want; you deserve it! Then, pick something harder that might cause you to fail.

Once you fail, post the video or photo on your social media and say, “I tried ___ and failed today.”

I will absolutely guarantee you that fewer people will see it than you imagined when you were paralyzed by fear of embarrassment. But even more than that, I promise you that 99% of the comments will be people cheering for you to keep trying. 

When you finally acknowledge the reality of how many people care compared to how many people will enjoy your failure, you can finally let that go and just go for it.

Next week, we’ll talk about the real risk of letting your fear of failure win: regret.