March 9, 2022 • 25 mins
What does psychology have to say about our fear of failure and how can we change our mindset to one that embraces the mistakes we are inevitably going to make? This week we discuss failure of many sorts in our 20’s: relationships, academic, in the workplace. Tune in!
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean
for our psychology. This week, we're discussing the psychology of failure.
(00:25):
This was inspired by a Sex and the City episode.
I've been obsessed with that show recently. I don't know why.
Maybe it's like moving to a new city, a big
city that's really got me into it. But Carrie did
a didn't what is it called an article I guess
on failure, and I was like, this is a great
inspiration from the podcast or for the podcast. So from
(00:48):
now on, all podcast episodes we'll make direct references to
Sex and the City episodes. But that aside, I think
the reason why it kind of stuck with me is
because we're all in nevertably going to fail in our twenties,
probably multiple times, whether at work or UNI, in relationships,
dealing with finances, or leaps of faith where we fall short,
(01:11):
even just like perceiving failure and things that aren't really failures,
they're just mistakes or things we wish we'd done differently.
So I think it's important to kind of get our
head around it, and for me at the moment, I
think there's just been a few things in the past
six months where I've felt like a sense of failure
for some reason. Perhaps it's unjustified, but yeah, most of
(01:36):
these episodes I kind of just do because it's something
I'm thinking about a lot at the moment. So if
you're in the same boat, hopefully you get something out
of this episode. But before we dive in, I just
want to say thank you for all the support and
love my two recent episodes have gotten. The one I
did the two that I did with Cloudier, I have
been getting heaps of messages from people who have been
(01:59):
tuning in, and honestly, it makes me so happy. It
makes my day. I heard this quote the other day
and it says, when you put something out there in
the world, ten percent of people are going to hate it,
eighty percent of people are going to be indifferent, and
ten percent of people are going to love it. So
for all of those who do love it, thank you
so much for reading, for reaching out to me and
(02:21):
making that known. And if you do feel called to
do so, please consider leaving a review on either Spotify
and Apple Podcasts. It would be obviously massively appreciated, it
helps the podcast grow, helps my ego a little bit,
and then, as always, thanks for tuning in to this episode.
(02:45):
Failure is such a messy, messy concept in our younger years,
when small mistakes can feel so life altering and permanent.
But the more mistakes we make, the more I guess
we learn that they aren't the end of the world,
the consequences don't last forever, and the more we kind
of learn in general. So this episode, we're going to
(03:07):
talk about why failure is important in this decade of
our lives, how it affects our behavior and our self concept,
and how to overcome negative feelings or perhaps a fear
of failure, how to move on. So let's go. I
think failure is not just confined to our professional or
(03:28):
academic lives as we so often think they are. You
can fail at so many things in your twenties, and
chances are it's going to be the first of many
more times we experience that feeling. Like I said, I
do think we often think about failure in terms of constructed,
almost artificial settings where you either pass or you fail.
There's no great area, and that decision has kind of
(03:51):
made for you, you know, failing an exam, failing a
driving assessment, failing to get a job that you really wanted.
But in this episode, I want to kind of push
out a little bit further and talk about a sense
of failing at something more intangible and the sense that
you can fail in any area of your life, not
just academic, professional or an examination sense. So an example,
(04:16):
I was talking to a dear friend the other day
about her long term relationship that had ended just recently,
and they had been together for two years. And as
we were kind of debriefing and going through the timeline
of events, I asked her if she had told her
parents yet, and she said no, that she hadn't, And
when I asked her why, she said she was embarrassed.
(04:40):
She didn't want them to think that she had failed
at her relationship. And I remember having a similar feeling
after someone I was dating. After I ended things, I
felt like such a failure, a failure for having invested
time in this person, a failure for not having seen
the red flag seen this side lines, for having told
(05:02):
my friends and my family that I really like this guy,
only for you things to come to an end in
a way that was like not amazingly satisfactory, And in
the aftermath, I've feel like I felt like I couldn't
trust myself or my judgment anymore. And that's such a
critical feature of the sense of failing, the self loathing
(05:23):
that comes afterwards. So we are going to metaphorically kind
of fail at so many things in our twenties. We're
going to fail at keeping friendships, fail at feeling successful enough.
Sometimes the stakes are really high, But for most people,
I would say this decade of our twenties is a
time when failures won't mean the end of the world
(05:45):
or life as you know it. I'm guessing you don't
have kids, so you don't have big financial responsibilities, meaning
you have a bit more of a safety net. You
can always pick up your life and move. You know,
nothing's really holding you, holding you down to the environment
that you those failures in. So it's the perfect time
to kind of teach yourself, to pick yourself up and
(06:05):
learn the lessons at that moment, and that experience was
intended to teach you. And the chances are you'll fail
again and again and again in different ways, until one
day you'll just start failing at something different. So what
does psychology have to say about the impact of failure
on our minds, our behavior, our self concept. How can
(06:25):
we adopt, I guess, a more positive relationship with making
mistakes and failing in this formative decade of our lives.
So failure it hits us where it hurts for a
number of reasons, and it starts really early on in childhood,
as so many reactions and patterns often do. Failure and
(06:48):
fault are virtually inseparable in so many households, in so
many organizations and cultures, every child learns at some point
that admitting failure also means taking lane. Perhaps you're scolded,
or you're told to go to bed, you know, you
let the dog outside by accident, or you fail a
(07:09):
test and you receive some form of punishment for your
behavior and your failure, which leads to a negative internal
reaction and a bad feeling that you inherently want to avoid.
So after repeated positive or negative punishment, so either the
removal of a good thing or the introduction of a
bad thing to influence our behavior by an outside force,
(07:30):
maybe a parent or a teacher. Soon we don't even
need those figures in our lives to make us feel
bad and to get us to avoid mistakes. We have
internalized that feeling, and now we have a fear of failing.
We stop ourselves from failing because we've had enough experiences
to anticipate what will happen if we do. We've been
(07:52):
conditioned to know the outcome of our failures and to
know that those are not great outcomes the things we
want to avoid. So we begin to self monitor and
inflict that negative feeling or punishment that we normally receive
from an external figure on ourselves. So these early learning experiences,
(08:12):
I think, are why so few cultures and people have
shifted to an attitude of almost psychological safety in which
the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realized.
And there's another key reason we avoid failure, and it
has to do with the perception of interpersonal or group shame.
(08:33):
At the root of failure and a fear of failure
is shame, which is a very unpleasant emotion associated with
feeling like you're a bad person or are a flawed
or defective individual. If I make a mistake, if I fail,
how does that affect who I am and how I
(08:54):
see myself? As well as how others see me. How
will others see me? Is such a huge element of
this anti failure conundrum. And there's a very traditional and
well traded idea in psychology that humans naturally seek the favor, acceptance,
(09:15):
and admiration of the groups that they belong to. Maybe
it's your friendship group, your family group, your religious group,
your academic group. We want to be in the in group, basically,
and one way that we stay liked by the group
we're in is by sticking to the rules or blueprint
(09:36):
on what behavior is accepted, what actions and outcomes are accepted,
and which ones aren't. And if we stray, we may
be outcast. And when we were primitive beings, that meant
you know, pretty much certain death if you weren't part
of a tribe or a group. And that sense of fear,
that fear reaction, it survives today in our olympic system,
(09:57):
and that's a crucial part of the old brain that
controls our behavior to ensure survival, often unconsciously, and that's
a big part of this. It's unconscious. So let's give
an example. Say you make a really big mistake at work.
Been there, done that, got the T shirt? You fail
(10:17):
to kind of meet your boss's expectations for I don't know,
presentation or whatever whatever you do for work, and the
consequences of this will likely be criticism or some kind
of critique that feels like rejection, and for a while
you might not feel like you are as respected or
liked at work. You may not feel as accepted by
(10:38):
the group. And that's where a big failure of failure
comes from, the notion that you could be cast out
from a group whose respect and favor you unconsciously need,
you want, you crave, And the impact of failure is
pretty magnificent on our self concept and our confidence, self esteem,
(10:58):
or our self concept self evaluation construct that corresponds to
an overaw view of what we kind of contemplate and
evaluate about ourselves, both internally, how we see ourselves and
how we think others see us. Successes and failures they're
just inextripically linked to that, and they influence your mood,
(11:21):
They influence your emotional states, all to varyingly varying degrees,
as well as self esteem levels, in so far that
these events are perceived as personal successes or failures, which
either contribute to the image you have or detract from it,
emotions and self esteem. They're linked in everyday experience, such
(11:44):
that people with high self esteem report more positive states
of emotion, and people who lack self worth are generally
in more of a negative mood. So when we fail,
when a relationship breaks apart, when we lose a job,
or we miss out on an opportunity, this influences the
(12:04):
characteristics and thoughts we assign to ourselves and can be
really damaging for our self esteem and it can take
a while to recover and receive the necessary reinforcement to
rebuild those aspects of our identity that have been threatened
by a failure. And I think importantly for kind of
like the modern twenty something person. Social media also threatens
(12:27):
to make every slip up an extinction level event socially
and professionally, which contributes to this shame avoidance framework for
our fear of failure that we kind of discussed before.
Good news. When we get older, our failures don't seem
to hurt our self concept and the opinion or image
(12:47):
we hold of ourselves as much. So. In one study,
researchers found that the impact that perceived failure has on
our positive emotional states it declines the older we are.
I think older adults are assumed to change their affects, states,
and reaction to positive and negative stimuli across the lifespan,
(13:08):
but to less severe degrees. They also have more experiences
and learning opportunities to now be able to appraise a
potential failure for what it actually represents, which is something
that isn't a really big deal. According to a lot
of theoretical frameworks, older adults are just better equipped to
regulate their emotional states and to use this regulatory ability
(13:32):
to manage positive and negative emotions that may affect how
they see themselves, to kind of see them as something
that yes is related, and yes, influences how they see themselves,
but isn't the be all and end all. So I
guess that is something to look forward to. But in
(13:56):
our twenties, there are certain people who can handle earlier
better than others. And I'm sure you've seen this amongst
your friends. You know, the person who experience as a
huge step back and it doesn't seem to bother them,
versus I guess people like myself who it really does
kind of get to. So this psychologist Hire Cohen from
(14:17):
Carnegie mellon. I think, yeah, that's it, Carnegie. Mellen makes
the distinction between guilt prone people and shame prone people.
To bear with me here. When some people make mistakes,
they tend to focus more narrowly on their behavior. You know,
I made a mistake, I did a bad thing, and
now I'm going to think of ways to correct for this.
(14:38):
I'm going to improve. And that's an example of a
guilt prone person. They feel guilty for the mistake, but
recognize it and use it as kind of motivation to
change something outside of themselves and act in a way
that they can avoid the problem in the future. And
this psychologist Cohen says, this type of person is different
(14:59):
than the other group of shame prone people. So the
shame prone person is kind of like this. If you
do something wrong, you might think I'm a bad person
rather than just I did a bad thing and I
made a mistake. And if you think you're a bad person,
that's much harder to counteract, and that might lead you
to withdraw from people. So a healthier response to failure
(15:23):
is focusing on specific behaviors rather than looking at the
experience as a reflection of yourself, Because you could easily
change your behavior, but it's much harder to change who
you are or who you think you are. Researchers have
also found that people who strongly fear failure have a
composite of two personality characteristics low achievement orientation, that is,
(15:48):
they don't take much pleasure from accomplishment and meeting goals
and high test anxiety, a fear of not performing well
at a critical moment. So, in other words, they're motivated
less by the possibility of winning and gaining something of value,
and they're more motivated by their anxiety about the possibility
(16:08):
of messing up. And those are some of the same
personality traits that drive perfectionism, and it can show up
in people who are high achievers and people who are
less motivated to achieve. Doesn't matter. In fact, perfectionism, I think,
and fear of failure go hand in hand. From a
clinical perspective, there's one type of individual for whom failure
(16:31):
is particularly hard to deal with and overcome. And if
this is you, I'm so sorry, but maybe you'll listen
to this kind of profile of this person and be
able to be like artstart me. It's this condition, so
adolaphobia is a phobia or deep fear of failure, which
may lead people to avoid any situation where failure could
(16:53):
take place, hence isolating themselves from new and novel experiences
and opportunities. So adolophobia is often referred to as perfectionism,
and whilst it is considered extreme perfectionism. This associate professor
of psychiatry at the Wheel Corner Medical College, his name
is doctors Gael Salt, He says that it's more than that.
(17:16):
It is a true irrational and that's the key word
when we think about phobia's irrational fear of making any
form of mistakes. As with any phobia, people with adolaphobia
think about the fear of making a mistake in a
way that means they have to avoid situations where there's
(17:38):
a risk of that happening. And that's the other key
feature of a phobia, avoidance, So irrational and avoidance. And
they also obsess a lot about mistakes that they've made
in the past or imagine mistakes they could make in
the future, and these thoughts kind of cause them to
have overwhelming anxiety, another aspect of a phobia. So it
(17:59):
might make even feel panicky or nauseous dizzy or experience
a rapid heartbeat, that kind of panic that sets in
for a fear of failure, which is irrational, and it
often leads to constant judgment and a negative evaluation that
you can never believe you're doing things the right way.
(18:19):
And it's a kind of perfectionism that's more than just
striving for excellence or ambition. You know, we all innately
wish to be successful. However, on some level, the average
person can anticipate, except and tolerate shortcomings. We can tolerate
mistakes and failed attempts. But people with autolophobia, they just
(18:41):
feel crushed by even the idea of a failed attempt,
and it often makes them miserable and depressed and perhaps,
like I don't know if this is part of the
clinical definition, but definitely probably worse off because they aren't
actually ever able to try new things and learn lessons
from situations in which you're inevitably going to fail. I
(19:05):
think an intense fear of failure is not a place
we want to be in. And there's a saying fail hard,
fail soon, and fail often. And I really love this saying,
even if I struggle to fully realize it. Most of
the time. We talked about this shift in mind frame earlier,
But how is it the week and have a healthy
relationship with failure such that it creates growth rather than shame.
(19:30):
How can we be okay with failing often and not
only be okay with it, but make it part of
our life philosophy. Okay, I'm not going to give you
a simple equation here because I'm not a licensed psychologist.
I'm I don't know a life coach. Nor am I
going to say, you know, our failure is avoidable if
(19:52):
you just try a little harder, like we can get
away with never failing. That's silly talk. That is so silly.
Obviously you're going to fail, Isn't that just it's a
part of life. You know, every parent has said that
to you, I'm sure, But I think it's important to
talk about how our relationship with failure can change for
the better. So there's a common clinical tool in psychology.
(20:16):
It's called cognitive behavior therapy. For those who haven't heard
about it, which I'm sure if you've ever been to
a therapist you have. But the gist is this, if
you can change your perception of an event or an
experience so that you would praise it as being positive
or at the very least not life ruining. You allow
yourself to behave in a manner that reflects that new
(20:38):
mind frame. So it's kind of like, I don't know,
like a train, Like if you get the first part
of the train moving, the second part follows, and we
can apply this to failure. Choose a reasoning that works
best for you. So maybe it's failure is nothing but
an opportunity to grow, or everyone fails, no one's paying
attention to me in particular. Maybe it's you know, with
(21:01):
every failure, I'm one step closer to doing this right.
Whatever justification you need, you get to choose it. Find
the thing that you can accept more than you can
you know, not accept failure, and repeat that until you
no longer feel threatened by the idea of screwing up
or hurt by previous mistakes and failures that you've made.
(21:24):
It's almost like an affirmation or it's like a soothing tool.
Your cognition of a situation is linked to how you behave,
or react to that situation, as CBT says. Therefore, if
you change your perception around failure, your acceptance of it
as a part of life and something important will follow suit.
(21:44):
I think also importantly, you need to attach the outcomes
of your actions to your self concept, and that's something
we talked about when we were referring to older people
and how they're kind of more chill with it. Failure
it's linked to feelings and motions like sadness, anxiety, stress,
maybe even rage, and those feelings are incredibly uncomfortable for
(22:09):
any person, and we will do anything to get rid
of them, but they don't need to become deeply embedded
truths about yourself. Those feelings and emotions will help you
work harder to find different and better solutions in order
for you to improve the next time if you recognize
that the consequences of your actions are just that they
(22:31):
are an outcome of a series of events and decisions,
not just your self concept. Sometimes there are things you
can't control. You're not defective because you've failed. There's always
going to be new opportunities, there's going to be new
things to strive for. So I think with much of psychology,
embracing that negative state while it's there, learning from it,
(22:54):
not trying to avoid it, that can lead to healthy
coping mechanisms rather than isolate, projection or suppression. It's not
very growth mindset of you. If you just suppress those
negative feelings and worst case scenario, it might lead to
like a phobic pattern of behavior in which you don't
even allow yourself to be in situations where you could
(23:15):
make a mistake, And then are you really fulfilling your potential?
I don't know. Those are just some of my more
nuanced musings. I hope that despite the weird ramblings of
this episode, you've managed to take something in learn something
(23:35):
about the psychology. It's a bit of a shorter episode
this week. I know, I'm sorry. I guess it's interesting
like failure. I've kind of been feeling that a lot recently,
just with like making a big life decision, friendships ending,
relationships ending, yeah, and just feeling pretty down on myself
(23:58):
about how can I couldn't have anticipated the outcomes of
some of my actions a little bit better. But at
the end of the day, I think this is just
such a learning period in everyone's life. If you're around
the same age as me, which I'm guessing you are
if you're listening to this podcast, yeah, I just think
(24:20):
changing your mind frame is so important away from you know,
I failed, I failed, I failed to like what did
I learn here? And to some of those recent experiences,
Like there's just been so many lessons that have come
through despite like you know, the like not so much pain,
but like the hurt of the experiences. So yeah, just
(24:41):
very excited to like for the next chapter. I guess, well,
I think that's also silly. There's never chapters. It's just
one big life, one big story. No chapters needed anyhow. Sorry,
just using this as my personal journal. I guess sometimes
I find it that way because I know that probably
the one probably listening back to this in ten years,
(25:03):
and it's good to kind of know where I was at.
But I hope you did enjoy this episode. I hope
you learned something. I hope if you have at alophobia
you get some help because that sh it sounds brutal.
And thanks again for listening. Follow us on Instagram, Follow
us on Facebook. I never use the Facebook page, but
it's there. If that's your cup of tea. Leave a review.
(25:25):
I love when people leave me reviews. I'll be sending
you air kisses from Afar if you do that, And
I hope you have a magnificent week. I know UNI
started again, I know works back on, people are starting
new jobs. It's all very exciting. So throughout all that,
don't be scared to fail, and don't be scared to
reach out and listen to the podcast. Wow, that was
(25:48):
really smooth. Anyhow, I will see you guys soon
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean
for our psychology. This week, we're discussing the psychology of failure.
(00:25):
This was inspired by a Sex and the City episode.
I've been obsessed with that show recently. I don't know why.
Maybe it's like moving to a new city, a big
city that's really got me into it. But Carrie did
a didn't what is it called an article I guess
on failure, and I was like, this is a great
inspiration from the podcast or for the podcast. So from
(00:48):
now on, all podcast episodes we'll make direct references to
Sex and the City episodes. But that aside, I think
the reason why it kind of stuck with me is
because we're all in nevertably going to fail in our twenties,
probably multiple times, whether at work or UNI, in relationships,
dealing with finances, or leaps of faith where we fall short,
(01:11):
even just like perceiving failure and things that aren't really failures,
they're just mistakes or things we wish we'd done differently.
So I think it's important to kind of get our
head around it, and for me at the moment, I
think there's just been a few things in the past
six months where I've felt like a sense of failure
for some reason. Perhaps it's unjustified, but yeah, most of
(01:36):
these episodes I kind of just do because it's something
I'm thinking about a lot at the moment. So if
you're in the same boat, hopefully you get something out
of this episode. But before we dive in, I just
want to say thank you for all the support and
love my two recent episodes have gotten. The one I
did the two that I did with Cloudier, I have
been getting heaps of messages from people who have been
(01:59):
tuning in, and honestly, it makes me so happy. It
makes my day. I heard this quote the other day
and it says, when you put something out there in
the world, ten percent of people are going to hate it,
eighty percent of people are going to be indifferent, and
ten percent of people are going to love it. So
for all of those who do love it, thank you
so much for reading, for reaching out to me and
(02:21):
making that known. And if you do feel called to
do so, please consider leaving a review on either Spotify
and Apple Podcasts. It would be obviously massively appreciated, it
helps the podcast grow, helps my ego a little bit,
and then, as always, thanks for tuning in to this episode.
(02:45):
Failure is such a messy, messy concept in our younger years,
when small mistakes can feel so life altering and permanent.
But the more mistakes we make, the more I guess
we learn that they aren't the end of the world,
the consequences don't last forever, and the more we kind
of learn in general. So this episode, we're going to
(03:07):
talk about why failure is important in this decade of
our lives, how it affects our behavior and our self concept,
and how to overcome negative feelings or perhaps a fear
of failure, how to move on. So let's go. I
think failure is not just confined to our professional or
(03:28):
academic lives as we so often think they are. You
can fail at so many things in your twenties, and
chances are it's going to be the first of many
more times we experience that feeling. Like I said, I
do think we often think about failure in terms of constructed,
almost artificial settings where you either pass or you fail.
There's no great area, and that decision has kind of
(03:51):
made for you, you know, failing an exam, failing a
driving assessment, failing to get a job that you really wanted.
But in this episode, I want to kind of push
out a little bit further and talk about a sense
of failing at something more intangible and the sense that
you can fail in any area of your life, not
just academic, professional or an examination sense. So an example,
(04:16):
I was talking to a dear friend the other day
about her long term relationship that had ended just recently,
and they had been together for two years. And as
we were kind of debriefing and going through the timeline
of events, I asked her if she had told her
parents yet, and she said no, that she hadn't, And
when I asked her why, she said she was embarrassed.
(04:40):
She didn't want them to think that she had failed
at her relationship. And I remember having a similar feeling
after someone I was dating. After I ended things, I
felt like such a failure, a failure for having invested
time in this person, a failure for not having seen
the red flag seen this side lines, for having told
(05:02):
my friends and my family that I really like this guy,
only for you things to come to an end in
a way that was like not amazingly satisfactory, And in
the aftermath, I've feel like I felt like I couldn't
trust myself or my judgment anymore. And that's such a
critical feature of the sense of failing, the self loathing
(05:23):
that comes afterwards. So we are going to metaphorically kind
of fail at so many things in our twenties. We're
going to fail at keeping friendships, fail at feeling successful enough.
Sometimes the stakes are really high, But for most people,
I would say this decade of our twenties is a
time when failures won't mean the end of the world
(05:45):
or life as you know it. I'm guessing you don't
have kids, so you don't have big financial responsibilities, meaning
you have a bit more of a safety net. You
can always pick up your life and move. You know,
nothing's really holding you, holding you down to the environment
that you those failures in. So it's the perfect time
to kind of teach yourself, to pick yourself up and
(06:05):
learn the lessons at that moment, and that experience was
intended to teach you. And the chances are you'll fail
again and again and again in different ways, until one
day you'll just start failing at something different. So what
does psychology have to say about the impact of failure
on our minds, our behavior, our self concept. How can
(06:25):
we adopt, I guess, a more positive relationship with making
mistakes and failing in this formative decade of our lives.
So failure it hits us where it hurts for a
number of reasons, and it starts really early on in childhood,
as so many reactions and patterns often do. Failure and
(06:48):
fault are virtually inseparable in so many households, in so
many organizations and cultures, every child learns at some point
that admitting failure also means taking lane. Perhaps you're scolded,
or you're told to go to bed, you know, you
let the dog outside by accident, or you fail a
(07:09):
test and you receive some form of punishment for your
behavior and your failure, which leads to a negative internal
reaction and a bad feeling that you inherently want to avoid.
So after repeated positive or negative punishment, so either the
removal of a good thing or the introduction of a
bad thing to influence our behavior by an outside force,
(07:30):
maybe a parent or a teacher. Soon we don't even
need those figures in our lives to make us feel
bad and to get us to avoid mistakes. We have
internalized that feeling, and now we have a fear of failing.
We stop ourselves from failing because we've had enough experiences
to anticipate what will happen if we do. We've been
(07:52):
conditioned to know the outcome of our failures and to
know that those are not great outcomes the things we
want to avoid. So we begin to self monitor and
inflict that negative feeling or punishment that we normally receive
from an external figure on ourselves. So these early learning experiences,
(08:12):
I think, are why so few cultures and people have
shifted to an attitude of almost psychological safety in which
the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realized.
And there's another key reason we avoid failure, and it
has to do with the perception of interpersonal or group shame.
(08:33):
At the root of failure and a fear of failure
is shame, which is a very unpleasant emotion associated with
feeling like you're a bad person or are a flawed
or defective individual. If I make a mistake, if I fail,
how does that affect who I am and how I
(08:54):
see myself? As well as how others see me. How
will others see me? Is such a huge element of
this anti failure conundrum. And there's a very traditional and
well traded idea in psychology that humans naturally seek the favor, acceptance,
(09:15):
and admiration of the groups that they belong to. Maybe
it's your friendship group, your family group, your religious group,
your academic group. We want to be in the in group, basically,
and one way that we stay liked by the group
we're in is by sticking to the rules or blueprint
(09:36):
on what behavior is accepted, what actions and outcomes are accepted,
and which ones aren't. And if we stray, we may
be outcast. And when we were primitive beings, that meant
you know, pretty much certain death if you weren't part
of a tribe or a group. And that sense of fear,
that fear reaction, it survives today in our olympic system,
(09:57):
and that's a crucial part of the old brain that
controls our behavior to ensure survival, often unconsciously, and that's
a big part of this. It's unconscious. So let's give
an example. Say you make a really big mistake at work.
Been there, done that, got the T shirt? You fail
(10:17):
to kind of meet your boss's expectations for I don't know,
presentation or whatever whatever you do for work, and the
consequences of this will likely be criticism or some kind
of critique that feels like rejection, and for a while
you might not feel like you are as respected or
liked at work. You may not feel as accepted by
(10:38):
the group. And that's where a big failure of failure
comes from, the notion that you could be cast out
from a group whose respect and favor you unconsciously need,
you want, you crave, And the impact of failure is
pretty magnificent on our self concept and our confidence, self esteem,
(10:58):
or our self concept self evaluation construct that corresponds to
an overaw view of what we kind of contemplate and
evaluate about ourselves, both internally, how we see ourselves and
how we think others see us. Successes and failures they're
just inextripically linked to that, and they influence your mood,
(11:21):
They influence your emotional states, all to varyingly varying degrees,
as well as self esteem levels, in so far that
these events are perceived as personal successes or failures, which
either contribute to the image you have or detract from it,
emotions and self esteem. They're linked in everyday experience, such
(11:44):
that people with high self esteem report more positive states
of emotion, and people who lack self worth are generally
in more of a negative mood. So when we fail,
when a relationship breaks apart, when we lose a job,
or we miss out on an opportunity, this influences the
(12:04):
characteristics and thoughts we assign to ourselves and can be
really damaging for our self esteem and it can take
a while to recover and receive the necessary reinforcement to
rebuild those aspects of our identity that have been threatened
by a failure. And I think importantly for kind of
like the modern twenty something person. Social media also threatens
(12:27):
to make every slip up an extinction level event socially
and professionally, which contributes to this shame avoidance framework for
our fear of failure that we kind of discussed before.
Good news. When we get older, our failures don't seem
to hurt our self concept and the opinion or image
(12:47):
we hold of ourselves as much. So. In one study,
researchers found that the impact that perceived failure has on
our positive emotional states it declines the older we are.
I think older adults are assumed to change their affects, states,
and reaction to positive and negative stimuli across the lifespan,
(13:08):
but to less severe degrees. They also have more experiences
and learning opportunities to now be able to appraise a
potential failure for what it actually represents, which is something
that isn't a really big deal. According to a lot
of theoretical frameworks, older adults are just better equipped to
regulate their emotional states and to use this regulatory ability
(13:32):
to manage positive and negative emotions that may affect how
they see themselves, to kind of see them as something
that yes is related, and yes, influences how they see themselves,
but isn't the be all and end all. So I
guess that is something to look forward to. But in
(13:56):
our twenties, there are certain people who can handle earlier
better than others. And I'm sure you've seen this amongst
your friends. You know, the person who experience as a
huge step back and it doesn't seem to bother them,
versus I guess people like myself who it really does
kind of get to. So this psychologist Hire Cohen from
(14:17):
Carnegie mellon. I think, yeah, that's it, Carnegie. Mellen makes
the distinction between guilt prone people and shame prone people.
To bear with me here. When some people make mistakes,
they tend to focus more narrowly on their behavior. You know,
I made a mistake, I did a bad thing, and
now I'm going to think of ways to correct for this.
(14:38):
I'm going to improve. And that's an example of a
guilt prone person. They feel guilty for the mistake, but
recognize it and use it as kind of motivation to
change something outside of themselves and act in a way
that they can avoid the problem in the future. And
this psychologist Cohen says, this type of person is different
(14:59):
than the other group of shame prone people. So the
shame prone person is kind of like this. If you
do something wrong, you might think I'm a bad person
rather than just I did a bad thing and I
made a mistake. And if you think you're a bad person,
that's much harder to counteract, and that might lead you
to withdraw from people. So a healthier response to failure
(15:23):
is focusing on specific behaviors rather than looking at the
experience as a reflection of yourself, Because you could easily
change your behavior, but it's much harder to change who
you are or who you think you are. Researchers have
also found that people who strongly fear failure have a
composite of two personality characteristics low achievement orientation, that is,
(15:48):
they don't take much pleasure from accomplishment and meeting goals
and high test anxiety, a fear of not performing well
at a critical moment. So, in other words, they're motivated
less by the possibility of winning and gaining something of value,
and they're more motivated by their anxiety about the possibility
(16:08):
of messing up. And those are some of the same
personality traits that drive perfectionism, and it can show up
in people who are high achievers and people who are
less motivated to achieve. Doesn't matter. In fact, perfectionism, I think,
and fear of failure go hand in hand. From a
clinical perspective, there's one type of individual for whom failure
(16:31):
is particularly hard to deal with and overcome. And if
this is you, I'm so sorry, but maybe you'll listen
to this kind of profile of this person and be
able to be like artstart me. It's this condition, so
adolaphobia is a phobia or deep fear of failure, which
may lead people to avoid any situation where failure could
(16:53):
take place, hence isolating themselves from new and novel experiences
and opportunities. So adolophobia is often referred to as perfectionism,
and whilst it is considered extreme perfectionism. This associate professor
of psychiatry at the Wheel Corner Medical College, his name
is doctors Gael Salt, He says that it's more than that.
(17:16):
It is a true irrational and that's the key word
when we think about phobia's irrational fear of making any
form of mistakes. As with any phobia, people with adolaphobia
think about the fear of making a mistake in a
way that means they have to avoid situations where there's
(17:38):
a risk of that happening. And that's the other key
feature of a phobia, avoidance, So irrational and avoidance. And
they also obsess a lot about mistakes that they've made
in the past or imagine mistakes they could make in
the future, and these thoughts kind of cause them to
have overwhelming anxiety, another aspect of a phobia. So it
(17:59):
might make even feel panicky or nauseous dizzy or experience
a rapid heartbeat, that kind of panic that sets in
for a fear of failure, which is irrational, and it
often leads to constant judgment and a negative evaluation that
you can never believe you're doing things the right way.
(18:19):
And it's a kind of perfectionism that's more than just
striving for excellence or ambition. You know, we all innately
wish to be successful. However, on some level, the average
person can anticipate, except and tolerate shortcomings. We can tolerate
mistakes and failed attempts. But people with autolophobia, they just
(18:41):
feel crushed by even the idea of a failed attempt,
and it often makes them miserable and depressed and perhaps,
like I don't know if this is part of the
clinical definition, but definitely probably worse off because they aren't
actually ever able to try new things and learn lessons
from situations in which you're inevitably going to fail. I
(19:05):
think an intense fear of failure is not a place
we want to be in. And there's a saying fail hard,
fail soon, and fail often. And I really love this saying,
even if I struggle to fully realize it. Most of
the time. We talked about this shift in mind frame earlier,
But how is it the week and have a healthy
relationship with failure such that it creates growth rather than shame.
(19:30):
How can we be okay with failing often and not
only be okay with it, but make it part of
our life philosophy. Okay, I'm not going to give you
a simple equation here because I'm not a licensed psychologist.
I'm I don't know a life coach. Nor am I
going to say, you know, our failure is avoidable if
(19:52):
you just try a little harder, like we can get
away with never failing. That's silly talk. That is so silly.
Obviously you're going to fail, Isn't that just it's a
part of life. You know, every parent has said that
to you, I'm sure, But I think it's important to
talk about how our relationship with failure can change for
the better. So there's a common clinical tool in psychology.
(20:16):
It's called cognitive behavior therapy. For those who haven't heard
about it, which I'm sure if you've ever been to
a therapist you have. But the gist is this, if
you can change your perception of an event or an
experience so that you would praise it as being positive
or at the very least not life ruining. You allow
yourself to behave in a manner that reflects that new
(20:38):
mind frame. So it's kind of like, I don't know,
like a train, Like if you get the first part
of the train moving, the second part follows, and we
can apply this to failure. Choose a reasoning that works
best for you. So maybe it's failure is nothing but
an opportunity to grow, or everyone fails, no one's paying
attention to me in particular. Maybe it's you know, with
(21:01):
every failure, I'm one step closer to doing this right.
Whatever justification you need, you get to choose it. Find
the thing that you can accept more than you can
you know, not accept failure, and repeat that until you
no longer feel threatened by the idea of screwing up
or hurt by previous mistakes and failures that you've made.
(21:24):
It's almost like an affirmation or it's like a soothing tool.
Your cognition of a situation is linked to how you behave,
or react to that situation, as CBT says. Therefore, if
you change your perception around failure, your acceptance of it
as a part of life and something important will follow suit.
(21:44):
I think also importantly, you need to attach the outcomes
of your actions to your self concept, and that's something
we talked about when we were referring to older people
and how they're kind of more chill with it. Failure
it's linked to feelings and motions like sadness, anxiety, stress,
maybe even rage, and those feelings are incredibly uncomfortable for
(22:09):
any person, and we will do anything to get rid
of them, but they don't need to become deeply embedded
truths about yourself. Those feelings and emotions will help you
work harder to find different and better solutions in order
for you to improve the next time if you recognize
that the consequences of your actions are just that they
(22:31):
are an outcome of a series of events and decisions,
not just your self concept. Sometimes there are things you
can't control. You're not defective because you've failed. There's always
going to be new opportunities, there's going to be new
things to strive for. So I think with much of psychology,
embracing that negative state while it's there, learning from it,
(22:54):
not trying to avoid it, that can lead to healthy
coping mechanisms rather than isolate, projection or suppression. It's not
very growth mindset of you. If you just suppress those
negative feelings and worst case scenario, it might lead to
like a phobic pattern of behavior in which you don't
even allow yourself to be in situations where you could
(23:15):
make a mistake, And then are you really fulfilling your potential?
I don't know. Those are just some of my more
nuanced musings. I hope that despite the weird ramblings of
this episode, you've managed to take something in learn something
(23:35):
about the psychology. It's a bit of a shorter episode
this week. I know, I'm sorry. I guess it's interesting
like failure. I've kind of been feeling that a lot recently,
just with like making a big life decision, friendships ending,
relationships ending, yeah, and just feeling pretty down on myself
(23:58):
about how can I couldn't have anticipated the outcomes of
some of my actions a little bit better. But at
the end of the day, I think this is just
such a learning period in everyone's life. If you're around
the same age as me, which I'm guessing you are
if you're listening to this podcast, yeah, I just think
(24:20):
changing your mind frame is so important away from you know,
I failed, I failed, I failed to like what did
I learn here? And to some of those recent experiences,
Like there's just been so many lessons that have come
through despite like you know, the like not so much pain,
but like the hurt of the experiences. So yeah, just
(24:41):
very excited to like for the next chapter. I guess, well,
I think that's also silly. There's never chapters. It's just
one big life, one big story. No chapters needed anyhow. Sorry,
just using this as my personal journal. I guess sometimes
I find it that way because I know that probably
the one probably listening back to this in ten years,
(25:03):
and it's good to kind of know where I was at.
But I hope you did enjoy this episode. I hope
you learned something. I hope if you have at alophobia
you get some help because that sh it sounds brutal.
And thanks again for listening. Follow us on Instagram, Follow
us on Facebook. I never use the Facebook page, but
it's there. If that's your cup of tea. Leave a review.
(25:25):
I love when people leave me reviews. I'll be sending
you air kisses from Afar if you do that, And
I hope you have a magnificent week. I know UNI
started again, I know works back on, people are starting
new jobs. It's all very exciting. So throughout all that,
don't be scared to fail, and don't be scared to
reach out and listen to the podcast. Wow, that was
(25:48):
really smooth. Anyhow, I will see you guys soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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