Is the fear of failure holding you back?
It ends now.
Discover how to overcome your fears and live the life you deserve.
What is Fear of Failure?
Fear of failure is a fear of action. We’re too scared to do anything to improve our lives because the thought that we could fail at it holds us back.
Fear of failure hinders progress and prevents growth. It’s so overwhelming that we choose to stagnate rather than face the possibility that we will fail.
Signs You Might Experience Fear of Failure

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Here are some warning signs you might fear failure.
Anxiety
You aren’t sure how to act or what to do, which often leads to anxiety. You struggle to make decisions.
Avoidance
You avoid anything that could lead to failure. You don’t do homework, volunteer for anything, or try new things.
Helplessness
You feel helpless as if your life is a journey you cannot control. Someone else is driving, and you don’t know how to take the wheel. You go along with it.
Abnormal Emotional Responses
You may feel angry or sad when asked to do something. You may respond with an emotional outburst because the focus is on the outburst rather than the thing you don’t want to try.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism may seem out of place on this list, but it’s often a response to a fear of failure.
But the nasty secret is nothing will ever be perfect. Therefore, you can always put it off, pretending that you’re trying to make it perfect when we both know perfect doesn’t exist.
Failure to Launch
People who fear failure may latch onto their comfort zone. You may stay at your high school job, refuse to move from your parent’s house, or cling to your old friends who have outgrown you (unless you stagnate together).
If you don’t try to grow, you won’t fail at it.
Why Do We Fear Failure?
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In 2001, Dr. David E. Conroy developed the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) to measure the fear of failure and its causes.
During his research, he identified five reasons we are terrified of failing. These include:
- Shame and embarrassment
- Devaluing self-esteem
- Losing social influence
- Having an uncertain future
- Upsetting others
Let’s deep dive into each to understand what it means and discover how to overcome it.
Shame and Embarrassment
Our society balks at failure. It starts early in life, with school children deriding each other for failure to catch a ball, mispronouncing a word, or getting a wrong answer.
Parents perpetuate the idea that failure is bad at home, yelling at their kids for any small mistake.
The cultural attitudes surrounding failure make it seem like the worst thing in the world. Failing brings shame and embarrassment, feelings we try our hardest to avoid. If we don’t try, we can’t disappoint; thus, we won’t feel those complicated emotions.
Devaluing Self-Esteem
Our confidence often relies on our abilities. If we think we can do something, we feel better about ourselves, while learning we can’t do the things we thought we could shatters our self-esteem.
Sometimes, acting like you can do something is more comfortable than trying it and getting proven wrong. Failing can destroy the bubble we built around ourselves that protects our identity.
Losing Social Influence
The media loves stories where the bully ultimately loses a fight and swiftly drops down the social ladder. Although these tales are portrayed as triumphs where the underdog wins, the underlying theme highlights why so many fear failure: you lose your social status.
People show winners more respect. You can expect harsher treatment after a failure than after a win. You may lose friends and influence.
Social status is crucial to happiness, so avoiding failure at all costs is better.
Having an Uncertain Future
As adults, failure is even more harrowing. If we fail at work, we could lose our jobs, putting our entire lives at risk.
Taking a chance as an adult is far too risky. We could lose our incomes, health insurance, homes, and family’s financial stability.
It’s far better to play it safe in today’s society than risk losing everything due to failure.
Upsetting Others
Everyone in our life has expectations of us. We care how our parents, teachers, spouses, and children react to our accomplishments and failures.
The burden is a heavy one. We’re so terrified of disappointing our loved ones that we freeze, unable to act, knowing they may react poorly to a failure.
It’s All Cultural
Conrey didn’t dive into why people experience these feelings.
However, all of them evolve from culture rather than biology.
Our culture promotes winning as the epitome of success and decries failure as the ultimate catastrophe.
Parents put outrageous expectations on their children and deride them when they can’t achieve them. Society decides that failure should mean shame and embarrassment rather than opportunity and self-discovery. The lack of a social safety net forces us to fear for our livelihoods should we fail at work and prevents us from striking out on our own.
A cultural shift could change our perceptions about failure, allowing us to embrace it as a learning opportunity rather than fear it.
How Does Fear of Failure Hold Us Back?
The fear of failure harms us, both individually and as a society.
Impacts on Individuals
The impacts of fearing failure are easiest to see at the individual level. They include:
- Refusal to Improve Ourselves
- Stagnation
- Low Self-Esteem
- Inability to Speak Up
- Challenge Avoidance
- Troubled Social Connections
- Inability to Self-Actualize
Refusal To Improve Ourselves
When we’re afraid of failure, we’re so scared to try. We don’t do things that would make our lives better because what if we did it, and our lives didn’t get better?
That would just make things worse.
So instead, we don’t try. We never grow, improve, or develop.
Stagnation
Refusal to improve leads to stagnation. We get stuck in a dead-end job and cannot score a promotion. We watch our friends grow while feeling left behind.
Low Self-Esteem
Fear of failure leads to low self-esteem, while low self-esteem can make you fear failure. The more you refuse a challenge, the worse you feel about yourself.
It’s a vicious cycle that’s difficult to escape.
We Don’t Speak Up
“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
Although this quote is related to boasters and arrogance, those who fear failure can relate. They’re afraid of speaking their minds because what if they’re wrong? What if someone thinks they’re a fool?
So they remain quiet – even if they know the answer or have an insightful question. Their low self-esteem and fear of looking “foolish” prevents them from engaging – in class, at work, in the workplace, and in life.
We Avoid Challenges
People who fear failure miss out on one of the most splendid feelings available to humanity: the burst of pride when you accomplish a difficult goal.
Overcoming a challenge is crucial to a happy life, yet those who fear failure hide from them. While healthy people see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, people with lower self-esteem see them as impossible obstacles.
They don’t want to face the hurdle because they can’t see the happiness and pride on the other side. They know the despair they’ll face should they fail.
Troubled Social Connections
Social relationships are crucial for a happy life, but those who fear failure may struggle to connect with others. Some don’t believe they deserve friends or fear looking “foolish” in front of others.
However, some overcompensate for their fears with aggressive boasting. Though they hope to attract people with fake confidence, they often turn people off through arrogant behavior.
Inability to Self-Actualize
Famed psychologist Abraham Maslow placed self-actualization at the top of the hierarchy of human needs. It’s the pinnacle of human happiness.
Those who fear failure can never achieve it. You can’t self-actualize when you’re too afraid to try things.
Impacts to Society
Society also suffers from a cultural evasion of failure. When people in society fear failure, especially due to policies and attitudes that criticize it at every turn, society stagnates.
Here’s what to expect in a culture that despises failure:
- Lack of Innovation
- Loss of Arts & Culture
- Poor Mental Health
- Overall Unhappiness
Lack of Innovation
In a society that fears failure, innovation is punished.
Most innovation comes from trial and error. People develop wonders because they have the opportunity to try things that don’t work out.
When most of society can’t afford to fail, they can’t innovate. People don’t start businesses. They don’t invent things. They can’t break away from the toil of their “good job” to take a risk on something different.
Loss of Arts & Culture
Arts and culture also suffer when society as a whole fears failure. People don’t learn to create art because art doesn’t pay. Big studios pump out sequels, prequels, remakes, and revivals because they don’t dare try anything new.
Nobody makes art for the sake of art because if they fail, society will punish them harshly.
Poor Mental Health
In a society that can’t fail, mental health problems run rampant. People turn to substances to fill the void that overcoming a challenge would satisfy. They suffer from anxiety and depression because one wrong turn could cause homelessness.
The people are hopeless, but they’re also frozen, unable to try to better themselves for fear of an even worse outcome.
Overall Unhappiness
A society that can’t embrace failure as the learning opportunity it is can’t be happy.
People will struggle to find happiness if their culture rejects failure.
How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure
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Fear of failure is a complex challenge rooted in cultural norms and expectations preventing millions of people from achieving happiness.
However, you can overcome it.
These 11 tips can help you.
Recognize the Cultural Implications
The first step to solving any problem is understanding it. We’ve attempted to highlight how fear of failure is a societal problem – partly to help you see a crucial point:
It’s not your fault.
You may fear failure for various reasons, but at least part of it is cultural. Consider how society, your parents, teachers, and loved ones have reacted to any of your failures. Think about what would happen if you took a risk and failed.
How much of that is your fault, and how much is it because of how society works? You’ll see that your fear of failure partly stems from real-life consequences beyond your immediate control, but don’t see that as a reason to give up.
Instead, see it for the boon it is. It’s not you. You’re not a failure.
That leads us to the second crucial aspect of overcoming your fear:
Understand the Truth About Failure
Society is wrong about failure. It’s not this terrifying, horrible concept to avoid at all costs.
Failure is opportunity, strength, growth, and development.
Failure helps us learn and eventually leads us to success. It’s a fountain flowing with knowledge, wisdom, and information.
I’ll never understand why society scoffs at such a blessing, but guess what? You don’t have to.
Now that you know all the tremendous opportunities that flow from failure, you can embrace it as the lovely gift it is.
We know that’s easier said than done, so the following tips will help you take baby steps to overcome your fear.
Start with Low Stakes
You shouldn’t try to overcome your fear of failure by taking on a massive, life-altering endeavor. Not at first.
Start smaller. Do something with fewer consequences for failure.
Try baking a cake, drawing a dinosaur, or knitting a sweater. Who cares if you have no experience with any of these crafts – that’s the whole point!
Your first cake might burn, your dinosaur may look like a bird, and your sweater may have uneven sleeves. Is it the end of the world?
Nope.
But you probably learned how to improve for next time.
These small failures can help you dip your toe into the idea that failing at something isn’t as horrible as it seems.
Try Something New
A low-stakes way to build self-esteem is by trying new things. When you try something new, you learn about yourself and the world.
It doesn’t even have to relate to failure – not at first.
Try eating at a new restaurant, reading a new book genre, or attending an event you wouldn’t usually attend. These baby steps of trying new things will build your confidence and prepare you for higher-stake activities.
Achieve Financial Security
You may be shocked to see “achieve financial security” on a list of ways to overcome your fear of failure, but it makes sense if you’ve been paying attention to the full article.
Many of us fear failure because we lack a social safety net. If we lose our jobs, our big idea fails, or we can’t manage our business, our lives are ruined.
A life of destitution awaits those who fail.
But you can avoid that if you focus on financial security first – then take risks. Spend time building your investment and retirement portfolio with the safety of a secure job. Build a nest egg. Develop in-demand skills.
The financial backing will ensure that you’ll have a safe landing even if your big idea fails.
Embrace Growth
Developing a growth mindset is vital to overcoming a fear of failure.
When you embrace growth, you welcome challenges, seeing them as the learning opportunities they are. People with a growth mindset always say, “I can.” They believe in themselves and their ability to learn.
A growth mindset will help you accept failure as a fact of life. When it happens, you’ll look for ways to improve and win next time.
Review Past “Failures”
Our past mistakes can be our most significant learning opportunities.
Grab your journal and think about a time you failed at something. What happened? What were the results? How did your friends and family react, and how did it impact your life?
Now, think of the positives. What did you learn?
Every failure has a lesson, even if we don’t realize it at the time.
Next, think of how you reacted to the failure, and write about what would have happened if you responded differently.
Learn New Skills
Learning new skills helps us overcome our fear of failure in two critical ways.
First, everyone is terrible at a new skill when they first learn it, so you’ll realize it’s not the end of the world. Second, learning something new helps build confidence, and many people fear failure due to low self-esteem.
The more you learn, the more confident you will become and the fewer reasons you’ll have to fear failure.
Reframe Obstacles
Regardless of how small, every obstacle becomes an overwhelming burden when we fear failure. Try to reframe them as opportunities.
For example, a new job announcement came out for a position you desperately want. But you’d need to interview to get the job, and you’re afraid of failing.
You could stop there, refuse to put in, and continue to stagnate at work, or you could view it as an opportunity to improve your interview skills. Have a friend conduct a mock interview with you and provide feedback. Ask your boss for help. Seek assistance from a mentor. Take a class on how to interview.
When the time comes, ask the hiring official to provide feedback. Take notes to improve for next time, whether you get the job or not.
Every obstacle has a broad spectrum of learning opportunities; you just have to find them.
Love Yourself
Self-esteem is crucial to overcoming a fear of failure. Losing doesn’t seem as horrifying when you love yourself, regardless of whether you win or lose.
Foster self-love by showing yourself kindness, accepting who you are, and appreciating all the wonderful things you have.
Talk to Someone
People with a clinical fear of failure, or atychiphobia, may need professional help to overcome it. There’s no shame in seeing a psychiatrist for assistance when you can’t overcome the challenges alone.
Make an appointment with a trusted therapist to discuss your fear of failure. They can provide behavioral therapy to help you.
Be the Change You Wish To See
The fear of failure is rooted in culture, but people make up a culture, and people can change it.
While you’re battling your own fears, be the change you wish to see for others. Stop belittling others who failed; help them see the positives.
Celebrate those who tried and failed but learned from the experience. Create a culture where it’s okay to make mistakes, both at home and at work. Let people learn from their losses without the fear of repercussions hanging over their heads.
Together, we can create a society where failure is lauded just as loudly as success – because it should be.
Most successes were born from failure. It’s a crucial part of learning and growing that should be celebrated for the bounty it provides.
Failure helps us grow. Without it, we would all stagnate.