Normalising risk taking and fear of failure

A recent tweet from a colleague Jessica Mackelprang reminded me of the fear of rejection and failure dialogue I had been recently having with myself. To be honest, I have many, but there had been one I’ll share with you in the post that had featured in my mind a little too much. It was taking up a lot of real estate. Jess’s tweet reminded me of Madeline Dore’s (Extraordinary Routine’s blog and podcast fame) experiment over five years ago where she recorded every risk she had taken with her writing. She recorded every success but more importantly she recorded every no or rejection to a pitch, idea, draft, or submission. The recording wasn’t about switching the balance. It was about acknowledging that every no was a sign she had taken a risk and embraced learning from what can be viewed as a failure.

From a growth mindset perspective, failure teaches us when we have taken risks. As children it would probably not be uncommon for many of us to have embraced failure and risks. As adults we become more adverse - worried about judgement, shame, guilt, reluctance to take action, intense worry, or scripts of ‘what if’ dialogue playing around in your mind for example. What comes with this is possible fear of embarrassment, thinking failure means I don’t have what it takes to cut it, worry that you may be “stuck”, you are irrelevant, you lose out, or you may feel you might let others down.

What if we don’t take the risk?

Choosing not to pursue a goal means never giving them a chance to materialise. Taking a risk means you are exploring what might be possible, and of course what might be achieved. Key is that you will learn a lot on the way. And that can only be good.

Fear of failure may keep you safe, but it keeps you from growing. It doesn’t allow you to grow, try new things, embrace new ideas, make new connections, see other possibilities, have those ah ha moments that allow you to progress your ideas or expose you to new ideas, people or situations.

When embracing possible failure we often hear others say: What is the worst that can happen? You discover a new link, idea, make new connections, or you may even succeed in ways you didn’t expect. Yes, true. But at the time, it doesn’t feel this way. And for many of us failure has been associated with many layers of experiences that are difficult to process. Other’s reactions can haunt us, self-doubt kicks in, and well I don’t know about you but the not so helpful self-talk scripts can appear.

So in thinking about failure I want to share one approach that has helped me. It might help you as well.

FFTs or F*cking First Time.

Brene Brown in her first Unlocking Us podcast talks about fear of failure. She talks about it from a variety of different perspectives. From learning how to ride a bike with clip in shoes right through to serious topics like addiction. What she does offer is a really cool practical strategy to think about approaching fear. It’s called FFT or F*cking First Time.

So, when you are going through that awkward part of risk taking and you are putting yourself out there, what we want to do is try and tell ourselves is that we have the strength to come out the other side with new habits, skills, insights, realisations, and learnings. AKA we will become braver, we will be ok, and it is so worth taking the risk.

Here’s the strategy:

Identify you are in a FFT moment. This might sound like an internal dialogue that goes “oh hello, scared as hell. I see you. I see what's happening here.”
Name the FFT at this moment. You can ask yourself the questions - what’s going on here? Why am I reacting to this? Why am I feeling out of control? When we name we are helping ourselves to understand the moment, how we react and what is going on. We are not giving power to the reaction, rather naming this giving us power to effect change and achieve purpose.
Normalise your FFT moment. “Ok, this is how I am supposed to feel when I am trying something new” or “ah this is what taking a risk feels like”.

So, this strategy for me recently looked like this:

Identify: I was responding to feedback from 4 reviewers and the publisher's to a book manuscript [my first solo authored book, so insert higher level of self-doubt at times]. I’d taken my first risk and submitted a draft that was underdone. But at the time I was so close to it I couldn’t ‘see’ the words on the page [you know that moment when you are reading your own work but you are not taking it in. I was so close to it I couldn’t see spelling mistakes, super long sentences, where I had repeated myself, or even where I had missed an introduction to a chapter]. As I am processing the reviewer feedback and all the different perspectives I had multiple moments where I just had to walk away. I had that overwhelming feeling that I just couldn’t do this. “How could I process all of this feedback”. “I can’t do this”. “Why did I think I could write a book on self-care”. “It’s a pandemic, what was I thinking doing this”. “I’m just going to break my contract, this is impossible”. After a few weeks of this dialogue and a love-hate relationship with the manuscript edits and actioning a total restructure I was able to notice in myself what was going on. In the midst of my 953 versions of “I can’t do this” conversation in my head. I said to myself “hang on a moment, this is not helpful. I can do this I just need to acknowledge that how I work through this is different to pre pandemic days and my writing and deep thinking time looks different now, but it is possible”. The big identify moment going on here was “ah, I see what I am doing to myself”.

Name it: Self-doubt was kicking in. Pressures of my own expectations were kicking in. I was resisting acknowledging that my ways of working had changed (had to change) after nearly one and half years of working from home where personal and professional boundaries blur. My routines for writing and deep thinking have all changed. It is impossible to continue to force this. “Take the pressure off yourself Narelle” became a mantra I repeated myself as a positive affirmation to support establishing new routines. “You can do this, but it will take longer and be slower”. And “reminder to self, this is a pandemic, you’ve survived 5 lockdowns, no wonder you have a foggy brain hangover that just doesn’t seek to go away”.

Normalise it: Taking on a book project at the start of a pandemic may not have been a smart decision from one perspective, however writing a book on self-care had been a culmination of years of work and was a universe alignment. Right publisher, right time for the work. And actually probably the right time to rethink how and when I write. And especially the right time to be able to set boundaries that are more humaised - small chunks of time, listening to my body when it is tired, embracing slow writing and deep thinking to make connections - that may not have emerged if I had continue to work at the fast [note to self and everyone, unsustainable way] that I had become accustomed to. In normalising the situation I also reached out to others, asking the question, what were they noticing in their own writing habits during covid? And no surprises, everyone agreed habits had changed, they had to change. Short sharp bursts, chunking, and book time in the diary at peak mind flow energy points was key.

So how are you going to embrace failure?