I recently wrote about our society’s fear of risk, and I realized this morning that I missed a very important connected problem. Not only are we raised to avoid risk, a problem that automatically discourages entrepreneurship of any sort, we also develop a keen fear of failure.
I began reading Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson
founder of Virgin. I’ve really enjoyed the first 50 pages (it’s a 500 page monster) as its written in a highly entertaining storytelling form. It’s got an interesting quote too regarding the student magazine Branson started:
My schoolwork was going from bad to worst, but I was giving myself a wonderful lesson in confidence-building. Had I been five or six years older, the sheer absurdity of trying to sell advertising to major companies, in a magazine that did not yet exist, edited by two fifteen-year-old schoolboys, would have prevented me from picking up the phone at all. But I was too young to contemplate failure. Richard Branson
How long have you dwealt on the potential failure of your new venture or even your do it yourself kitchen cabinet project? I certainly don’t remember having these kinds of fears as a kid, yet how many of us can honestly answer that question now with “very little” or “not at all”? I jumped into a whole assortment of projects when young and simply expected that I would finish them and that they would work. Some did come to fruition and some got dumped when something even grander entered my head, but looking back I put some serious effort and dedication into things ranging from merely elaborate LEGO constructs to gigantic computer games.
Would You Give it Your Best Expecting to Fail?
The practical problem here is that succeeding in accomplishing something you genuinely care about doing is unlikely to be easy (unless you like easy challenges). Certainly the main focus of this blog - starting new businesses - is anything but simple. For this you have to be convinced that the venture is worth the effort to put 100% of yourself into it, to do your absolute best work. Any resistance, doubt, and second-thoughts are serious holdbacks to success for at least three reasons:
- The vision you have in your head is where you will inevitably end up. Failure is a self-fullfilling prophecy.
- Like it or not your competing in a world with other bright people who have put their absolute best into their accomplishments, be it in launching a business or winning an olympic event.
- Doing something great just can’t be done with mediocre effort.
Somewhere along the way, and no doubt heavily tied to a developed fear of risk, we become deathly afraid of failure. Suddenly it’s very difficult to get anything meaningful done because we are afraid of failing and the consequences. The bigger the decision the more at stake and the more afraid we are, so it’s no surprise that there’s a major resistance in people to starting a business or otherwise working for themselves. One of the comforts about working at a corporation that keeps employees as employees is that the company absorbs the brunt of your failures, not you. However the company also absorbs the majority of the benefits from your work, and if you have had a reasonably successful career then you must have been a net gain. Too bad it’s the company that has reaped most of the fruits of your labor.
I read somewhere that 90% of our fears never come true. I have no idea how accurate of a statistic that is, but it does make a very important point - most of the time we spend fearing something is time wasted on stuff that doesn’t actually happen. That in itself should be an inspiration to toss aside this unwarranted load of worry and just go out there and succeed. Becoming more fearless is something I’m constantly I’m working on, and I’ve made major headway by taking more risks and accepting more failures (thereby making failure a normal part of the process towards success).
It sounds like part of the solution for escaping a fear of failure is tackling it early on - before the possibility of failure becomes a barrier to getting started. One of my regrets is having never participated in a program like Junior Achievement which provides opportunities to start a business at a young age. Concepts like goal setting, success strategies, money management, etc should all be taught in school - a modern version of home economics (and mandatory for both genders). This kind of practical knowledge is key for getting the most out of life regardless of the path you take.
