I don’t talk about my anxiety a lot (read: ever) because I don’t want it defining me or becoming all consuming. And a big part of that anxiety comes in the form of this overwhelming fear of failure. Ever since I was little I have always avoided failure at all costs. I didn’t want to let my family down, my friends down, but really I just didn’t want to let myself down.
I feel like a fear of failure is a normal thing to have. That everyone has this voice in the back of their head constantly worrying about sucking. So how do I fight it? I embrace it.
Now I’m not about to say that you need to stroll hand in hand with your fear of failure and become best friends. But I know from years of failing at ignoring my fear of failure, that it’s just not going to work to pretend you’re above it. It’s better to just be honest with yourself (and others) that this fear exists, for good reason, but it isn’t going to paralyze progress.
It’s when I started talking about this fear and acknowledging that it exists with people close to me, that I started finding more comfort in, and help to fight against it. It’s definitely one of those “you’re not alone” types of situations. Everyone has this fear. Everyone. And if they think that they don’t, they just aren’t ready to face it yet.
I’m never going to feel 100% confident and secure in anything I do. It would be ignorant to believe a perfection like that exists. The fear of failure exists because there is failure in every single person’s life. There’s always something that doesn’t work out that makes you nervous to try again. Alex and I have started and failed at a handful of businesses before Oh, Hello. Who knows. Oh, Hello might still flop a year from now. But that fear of failure doesn’t stop us from giving our business our all every single day. That fear pushes us harder and makes us better business owners.
So yeah, I’m afraid of failure more now than ever before. There’s more at stake, more to lose. But I’m sure as hell not going to sit around and do nothing about it.
So fight on my friends.
Yours till the fortune cookies,
Kayla
