The Fear of Failure and Why You Need to Stop Being Afraid to Lose

I think far too often in too many things we focus on just one side of the coin. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be counter productive if you’re looking at the side that prevents you from succeeding, and succeeding big.

While I don’t have any specific role models that I look up to, one of the things I have come to admire are people who are masters of their trade – those considered “great” in their respective fields.

One of the things I have come to realize is that a key characteristic such individuals have in common is that they are fearless. To be more specific, what I mean is that they are not scared to lose.

I think it’s important to make this distinction between being fearless of losing and simply being fearless because fearlessness is all too often misconstrued as foolishness when it need not be.

Yes it is true that there is foolish fearlessness. For example, a fearless person who takes a test without studying is foolish. Fortunately, that’s not the type of person I am talking about and clearly not the type of fearlessness I am advocating for.

A master who is fearless is one who recognizes the failures or losses he may experience, but chooses to not focus on them. Instead, he focuses on succeeding.

There are many reasons why being fearless is critical to being successful, but there are two that stand out to me.

Focusing on Failure Prevents you From Taking Advantage of Opportunities to Succeed

For many of us, our upbringing is one focused on being as cautious and risk adverse as possible. The problem with this perspective is that this it often causes us to overemphasize the consequences of potential failure and ignore the upside of success (thus leading to missed opportunities). Sometimes this occurs to the point where it leads us to make irrational decisions because we’re so foolishly obsessed with being safe and secure, even in situations where risk is relatively low and can (and should) be managed.

Imagine if I told you I’d be willing to make you a wager on a flip of a coin giving you 4:1 odds on $25k. That is, if you win the flip I give you $100k, but if you lose, you give me $25k.

Some people are going to focus on the loss and instantly decline, imagining how much it would suck to lose money they could have spent on a new car. And that’s all they focus on.

Successful people will look at this situation from a more objective view. They will realize that there is a 50% probability of losing $25k, but a 50% probability they will win $100k. Since successful individuals are also awesome at basic probability, they will further realize this wager has a long term positive expectation of $37.5k ( 0.5x(-25k) + 0.5x(+100k) = +37.5k). That is, if you were to keep making this wager over and over again, you would on average win 37.5k with each bet.

But it doesn’t stop there. They will ask, more questions: Can I afford to lose $25k the 50% of the time it will happen? If so, will the benefits of winning $100k half the time outweigh the negatives of losing $25k half of the time? How much value do I place on having another $75k at this very point in time?

By focusing on the true expectation of the situation, and realizing that both successes and failures are natural processes of life, there’s no reason why we can’t theoretically succeed every time.

However, that is where managing risk comes in. My point is that you can’t let fear of the consequences of failure or losing prevent you from making good decisions. If you only looked at the consequences of losing, you would miss out on the potentially balance-altering benefits of winning.

It’s easy to see this when I lay out numbers for you. However, our fear of losing often shrouds our ability to accurately assess the probabilities of outcomes and what our long term expectation for going forward would be.

Often, visualizing losing accelerates the process from learning about an opportunity to not trying – even before a real assessment of expectation can be made.

For instance, I frequently get emails or comments from students asking me if they should apply for X scholarship because they think they don’t have a shot at winning. Already, they are picturing themselves losing. But let’s look at the possible outcomes. They don’t win the scholarship, and lose some time putting together the application. Or they win win the scholarship and help cut a chunk of their post-secondary expenses out of the way. I mean, to me, as long as you have the time, the decision seems pretty clear. Yet I still see numerous students obsessed with potential failure. Remember, you can’t win if you don’t apply.

Or imagine you are a guy walking down the side walk and notice a cute girl you’ve never met before. You think about stopping to talk to her, and if the conversation is good, maybe ask her out. But you visualize how embarrassing it will be if she gives you a weird look and walks by, or if she talks to you but eventually kindly rejects you. You imagine failure and end up walking by. At no point do you stop to compare the outcome to potential success. Instead, consider the possibility she’ll be super cool and say yes and you end up having ridiculously awesome chemistry with her. If you lose, you feel like an idiot for a few seconds with a girl you will probably never see again. Or if you win, you feel awesome and meet someone who might eventually be someone really important in your life.

In either of these situations I’m not saying there would be a positive long term expectation for someone in your shoes. All I’m saying is don’t miss out on making the assessment simply because you only see failure and not success.

It Does You No Good to Expend Mental Energy on Visualizing Failure

Simply put, it does you no good to waste energy thinking about losing when you could be using that energy to improve your chances of succeeding.

You can either spend that half hour today thinking about how sad your life will be if you bomb that medical school interview, or you could spend that time thinking about how to better approach the “Why Medicine?” interview question.

While taking the test, you can either visualize yourself repeating the course, or you can give your full attention to tackling the difficult calculus problem right there in front of you.

Some people argue that thinking about failure helps make the fall less painful if you indeed do lose. If that’s true for you, then you need to improve the ways you accept loss – thinking about loss over and over again isn’t going to do that for you. You need to realize that failure and loss is a natural part of the process. Everyone is going to have cycles of success and failure. You’re often going to need to fail a bunch before you succeed. Recognize potential failure, but don’t dwell on it.

If you’re going to spend time visualizing the consequences, at least visualize yourself winning. It’s difficult to win when you don’t actually believe you can. I mean, what’s the point in trying if you can’t win, right? You will naturally not try your hardest if you don’t believe you will win.

Do what I do. Delude yourself into believing you are capable of succeeding so that you see purpose in trying your best. Of course, this does not mean deluding yourself into believing your are destined or certain to win (remember, we have to still be realistic).

Fearing Loss is Not a Motivator, but Hating Loss Can be a Good One

“I hate to lose more than I love to win.”

The above is a famous quote by Jimmy Connors, one of the greatest male tennis players in history, and a feeling that strongly resonates with me and probably many of you included.

In fact, studies have shown that we experience up to twice as much pain from a loss than the pleasure we gain from an equivalent gain.

For me, nothing motivates me more than losing at something. If I lose at something, I want to know why, and I want to prove I’m capable of succeeding. If I win, then well, it just validates what I already believed before hand.

You see, thinking about losing can be a healthy and helpful thing, as long as you can use it to your advantage. If you’re going to think about losing, use it as a motivator to help you succeed.

Don’t avoid failure by not trying. Avoid it by succeeding.