Figure 3.1 There is a major connection between fear of failure and low self-esteem
3
FAILURE AS A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE
Any focus on fear of failure needs to look closely at the fear of failure – the fact our dread of failure is so powerful it disables our actions. So can failure ever be viewed as nothing to fear? In fact, can it ever be viewed positively? The answer is yes, if that’s how we decide to view it. View it as a milestone or lesson on the way to success, then that’s what it will be. View it, meanwhile, as a final result and therefore a condemnation of our character and – indeed – that too will be the near-certain result.
My writing “career” is a strong case in point with respect to the self-fulfilling nature of our view of failure. Having spent the last 18 months of my banking career “reverse commuting” to Greenwich, Connecticut, I used the journey to write about my experiences as a single British lad living in New York. Typed up in the evenings, soon I had around 60,000 words and was looking for a literary agent. By some miracle (in fact good research and hard lobbying) I landed one of the most respected literary agents in the business, and she landed me a publishing deal with one of the UK’s largest and most respected publishers.
I was set for a career wandering the globe as a humorous writer. I had hooped the distant peg, and whooped around my Upper Westside apartment like a man whose life had changed forever. And while from this distance such a prospect looks a bit silly, the joke wasn’t entirely on me. Both the agent and the publisher said the book sold well, although I was disappointed it hadn’t sold in its hundreds of thousands. In fact, that was a key reason for my failure with respect to my book-writing career – I understood nothing of the book-publishing world so had no way to gauge my expectations.
Ultimately, I failed as a writer because that’s how I decided to view it. By all accounts, a major house publishing my autobiographical first-book while I was still in my early 30s was a strong first step as an author. Sure, it hadn’t sold as many as I’d hoped but there were some strong lessons to learn regarding marketing such a book, as well as making sure the publisher is fully onside with respect to distribution – and, indeed, with respect to ensuring the author has realistic expectations regarding sales.
But I dismissed this in favour of the view that it was a total failure, because it failed to “breakthrough” and turn me into an overnight Nick Hornby. With no fame on offer I opted for the monkey’s interpretation that its failure to make headlines was a final confirmation of my innate awfulness. As for the lessons, what was the point of them? They’d never be implemented because I’d blown my only chance at making it.
And such feelings changed my behaviour – rendering me incapable of rationality when dealing, first, with the publisher, and then with the agent – not helped by an inevitable dose of writer’s block for a second book (inevitable because the confidence with which I’d written the original book had evaporated). Before long I’d been thrown out of the author’s club altogether.
Of course, I realize now that my behaviour had been that of a classic High-FF. Someone with high achievement motivation would have taken time to consolidate the achievement by controlling the marketing, cultivating the right people and deeply researching the next topic. This was no more than a debut book, the content of which should reflect my values for a future writing career (not the publisher’s – who may have a very different idea of the book’s potential audience). And if it failed to make the bestseller’s list? Well it was a lot to ask for a first book and there are lessons to get me further up the ladder next time.
Those with a high fear of failure, however, react with amazement at the prospect of success and immediately develop inappropriate and undermining behaviour (such as arrogance or boastfulness) while, in reality, losing control of the project and therefore the direction it will take them. And the second the results fail to match our probably-unrealistic expectations, we collapse – condemning ourselves as a fool for having ever thought we could aim so high. We are crap people, we conclude, forever-condemned to our lowly status – not realizing that we have chosen this response from the range of conclusions on offer, some of which were far from condemning.
While the above interpretation of failure is, as stated, the classic view of the High-FF, it also reveals another personality trait that cannot be ignored when dealing with fear of failure: low self-esteem. Of course, fear of failure and low self-esteem are different afflictions: fear of failure undermines our actions (changing our behaviour), while low self-esteem distorts our beliefs (generating negative evaluations). But, like fear of failure, low self-esteem is a self-fulfilling condition – leading us to evaluate the world in ways that encourage its external confirmation (that we are worthless).
While not all High-FFs have low self-esteem (or vice versa), fear of failure and low self-esteem are inextricably and obviously linked. They are fellow travellers – afflictions that feed off each other as much as they feed off their host – meaning that any programme for progress for High-FFs that ignores low self-esteem leaves a gaping and unbridgeable hole in the road.
Figure 3.1 There is a major connection between fear of failure and low self-esteem
As with fear, feelings of low self-esteem stem from our experiences from a very young age but are reinforced by what we are told and what we experience, and how we interpret such information, as we become adults. Such feedback – as well as the unconditional love and acceptance (or otherwise) from parents, teachers, siblings and peers – form our inner beliefs, perceptions, conclusions and predictions for life.
Of course, such self-beliefs can be a distortion. According to John Caunt in his very practical 2003 book Boost Your Self Esteem, no one is an unbiased observer of themselves. Misrepresentations, omissions and exaggerations can all distort our self-beliefs, resulting in low self-esteem when the same information – presented differently – could have generated entirely different conclusions. In fact many highly successful people suffer from low self-esteem, dismissing their achievements as worthless while ignoring the fact observers may be in awe of those very accomplishments.
“There is no automatic link between one’s competence and the level of one’s self-esteem,” writes Caunt.
Our lives are shaped not by events, says Caunt, but by our responses to those events (echoing Covey), “and the way we respond will be largely dictated by our self-beliefs.”
But we can change our beliefs, believes Caunt. We have developed one set of beliefs and have given them importance, so we can do the same thing again. We can create our own reality – even manipulating our thoughts, says Caunt. So far in our life we have manipulated them negatively to generate low self-esteem. So why not manipulate them for a more positive purpose?
Yet this is easier said than done in my view. Hardwired or default settings mean that any newly imposed thoughts or beliefs will feel like they are going against the grain, which will result in setbacks or failures being judged as confirmations that the original settings were the correct ones. That monkey won’t shift so easily I’m afraid.
But I may be taking Caunt too literally. What if we tried to reframe negative influences, not to change our inner beliefs or default settings but in order to soften or even alter their impact and therefore potentially change our response? We will look at reframing the negative assumptions that underline low self-esteem in Part Four but what about failure? Can we reframe our view of failure – perhaps even rethinking failure as something to embrace as a necessary part of the journey? Would that change the way we view failure – maybe even helping to reduce our fear of it? Maybe even helping me see the collapse of my writing career in a better light?
Maybe. As we have seen, those paralyzed by fear of failure go to great lengths to avoid public humiliation, including avoiding tasks or careers that may mean contact with the consequences of failure. But, as Alain de Botton says in Status Anxiety, fear of failure would not be so great if failure were not so harshly viewed. The world is unsympathetic to failure, referring to those that fail as “losers” – a word, according to de Botton “callously signifying both that people have lost and that they have at the same time forfeited any right to sympathy for having done so.”
This is tough, but is it true? At a primary level, yes of course. We all have to secretly hide our inner joy at even a friend’s misfortunes. And with our enemies and rivals we don’t even hide it. How many dinner parties have been dominated by the delighted chatter of negative gossip about a mutual acquaintance?
Such schadenfreude is classic competitive behaviour that any primatologist (those that study primates) would understand. Yet while this may suggest we have the wrong friends, it is more likely to suggest that we are looking at failure too personally. Exchange personal failure for company or organizational failure and attitudes change considerably. This is because companies are not people. They are a collection of people and machines brought together for an – often highly specialized – common goal.
In other words they are a project. And the failure of a project may dent the reputation and even the self-esteem of those involved. But it is by no means a final and fatal condemnation of the people – just of the project itself. The people involved just start again, a little bruised, a little wiser, but certainly not forever-condemned.
And if we could look at individual failure this way perhaps the crushing enormity and finality of it can be reduced. While not eliminating the pain, surely we can reduce the extent to which a single or series of setbacks confirms our poor self-beliefs? Those with high fear of failure view any failure as absolute, as a confirmation of their personal and irreversible lack of aptitude. But if they could view their progress as a project – and failure as no more than a single setback along the project’s path (a bend in the road perhaps) – they may be able to look beyond the pain, or at least not be derailed by it.
For instance, the loss of my writing career was only a “loss” because I chose to treat it as such. Those with high achievement motivation would have seen publication as a strong first step, with further thought required for “that difficult second book” – not its “failure” as an irretrievable condemnation of my abilities as a book writer. Indeed, they would have learnt the lessons, realizing that the initial project was clearly flawed but book writing as a long-term career choice was far from dead (I’d won over two of the most respected literary institutions in London, after all). It was my negative self-beliefs that made it final.
Despite what High-FFs think, failure is never absolute. According to Anthony Robbins, as long as a person breathes and is willing to act, there is nothing final about failure. So why should it be so personal? Is it not just one result, brought about by a range of circumstances some of which were beyond our control?
Seeing failure this way is a difficult task for High-FFs because it tells us to develop the mind of the High-AM, who is willing to learn from negative experiences and make small adjustments in the knowledge that goal attainment is not only possible but probable – even inevitable. They don’t need to depersonalize failure because they will not view it personally in the first place. Why should they when they know success is within their grasp?
But High-FFs need tools to get to this point, of which developing a mental depersonalization of their progress, or otherwise, could be one. If we could think of ourselves as companies – as Me Inc. or Me Ltd rather than just me – and our progress as a project, then we should be able to put failures in their place: as mere setbacks rather than ultimate condemnations of our self-worth.
And failure from the perspective of a company is a transformed concept. Tom Peters is perhaps the best known company guru of all. In his well-known book In Search of Excellence (written with Robert H. Waterman Jr. in 1982) he quotes senior industry figures such as the heads of Johnson & Johnson and engineering giant Emerson extolling not just the benefits of failure but its absolute requirement as an experience for leadership.
In fact, finding successful company executives promoting the virtues of failure is easy. They all seem to love talking about it:
“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe,” wrote Sumner Redstone, majority owner of MTV, CBS, Dreamworks, Paramount Pictures.
Meanwhile, Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda Motor Company, said: “Success is 99% failure.”
There are hundreds of such quotes.
Some of the most innovative companies even build failure into their business model. According to Tom Peters 3M (inventors of the Post-it Note and much else besides) guarantees product managers the ability to run with their inventions backed up by a commitment to total job security should it fail.
And in his seminar-turned-book Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations (1994) Tom Peters furthers his theme by railing at those bosses that cringe at the thought of failure while celebrating those that embrace it.
On Richard Branson he quotes his publisher John Brown: “The whole secret of Branson’s success is his failures … He keeps opening things and a good many of them fail – but he doesn’t give a f*** – he keeps on going.”
Failing is not the problem, according to Tom Peters – far from it. Failure is absolutely necessary. It is fear of failure that is the principal cause of paralysis in companies, whether it is the receptionist or the CEO. To overcome this he recommends that companies adopt a culture of failure. Of course this is fine for small failures but that is not enough for Peters. Every now and again the failure has to be “big, bold, embarrassing, face-losing and public.” Companies that do not make utter fools of themselves from time to time have become smug, according to Peters, and have therefore stopped growing.
And while this is a more difficult thing for individuals to accept, it should at least allow us to keep going after experiencing a setback – allowing us to focus on learning the lesson while retaining our focus on the ultimate goal. The most commonly used quote at this point involves Thomas Edison’s attempts to invent something (it ranges from the light bulb to synthetic rubber).
“I have not failed,” he says after so many unsuccessful attempts at his invention. “I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
This chimes with Anthony Robbins in Unlimited Power. He states that there are no failures in life – there are only results. If the result was not what we wanted, we should learn from the experience and make better decisions in the future. Indeed, this adds an important caveat to Tom Peters. It says that failure for its own sake – while refreshing – is pointless. The point is to learn from failure. To plunge in, make mistakes, recognize the mistake, learn and try again.
To offer another over-used quote – this time from Samuel Beckett in Worstward Ho (1983): “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
The key is not to seek failure but to not fear it: to embrace failure, even personal failure, as part of the journey.
This is an important realization for those with a high fear of failure. Not only are setbacks in many cases self-fulfilling due to our fear of failure and the corresponding changes in behaviour this brings, when setbacks do occur – as they will – we must condition ourselves to accept that they are by no means final. They are a result, but not the result. In fact, they are still probably a good result, as we can learn the lesson, regroup, and do it again with greater wisdom (“fail better” indeed).
Such setbacks only condemn us as bad people – as being innately awful – if that’s how we decide to interpret them. They are only final if we blow the whistle for full-time ourselves. But it’s our whistle. We can blow it when we like.