“Instead of trying to feel good, get good at feeling bad.”
Fear of failure. It’s a thing many of us struggle with.
I used to feel like if I didn’t do everything perfectly—follow all the rules my company, society, or family told me to follow—I’d be a complete failure.
In the past several months, I experimented on myself. What if I quit and “failed” at my career? What if I did all the things I had no experience in or even thought I was actively “bad” at? Like writing.
What if I tried?
I didn’t just find that my fears weren’t rooted in reality. I had it 100% backwards.
The real way to fail in life is to avoid failing altogether.
Failure is Not Your Identity
Most people avoid failure because they are afraid. Afraid of what?
What their friends, family, strangers might say about them
The emotional discomfort of uncertainty
“Wasting time” on something without guaranteed success
In the nicest way possible. You’re not that special.
Failure happens to everybody
Life is defined by uncertainty
You waste more time avoiding new things than simply trying them
Every “successful” person failed ten to thousands times more than they succeeded.
James Dyson — Spent 5 years and 5,126 failed prototypes before developing the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner.
Steven Spielberg — Rejected from USC's film school three times before becoming one of the greatest film directors in history.
J.K. Rowling — Rejected by 12 publishers before Harry Potter was finally published. The series has now sold over 600 million copies worldwide.
Do we call these people failures?
Failure is not your identity, it’s an event.
Instead of saying “I am a failure,” say “this failure happened,” just as “this success happened.”
Results are facts of reality, not indicators of your character or worth as a human being.
Failure is Your Ticket to Success
Think back to a time in your life when you hit a major low. There’s a high chance the next phase of life became a major high.
Successful people chase failures so that they can learn how to best succeed.
You can either think of failure as something scary to avoid, or as a learning experience. If you expect discomfort, knowing that growth is on the other side, the bad feelings will feel less bad.
Failure is feedback. Feedback is a gift.
With that reframe, there isn’t much of a distinction between “success” and “failure.” Instead, it’s more like “continuous learning.” It’s either positive signal that you’re on the right track, or positive signal you’re on the wrong track.
Success isn’t about “not failing.” The faster you fail, the faster you learn.
Success is your ability to take your failures and figure out what to do next.
This Week: What to Do in the Face of Failure
Chase something new this week, big or small. Get comfortable with discomfort when things don’t go perfectly.
Reframe failure as practice
Athletes don’t expect to win every game
Every day can’t realistically be your best day
Expect imperfection instead of perfection
Look forward instead of backward
Instead of “Why did this happen to me?”
Ask “What’s good about the fact that I just failed?”
You can always laugh
When things go wrong, look for the absurd
A little humor reduces a lot of stress
Hi, I’m Kat! Welcome to my newsletter—your weekly dose of mindset, perspective, and mental health for sustainable success.
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Happy Thanksgiving to those of you from the US! I am very very grateful for every single one of you reading this. If you have any thoughts or questions, simply reply back to this email. Chat again soon! <3
— Kat