Due to this, I’m afraid of working on my own projects. This fear especially intensifies when I’m reaching some kind of milestone or personal goal (e.g. implementing a feature in software, or going to the next phase of a drawing), and end up procrastinating instead. Even worse is that I believe if I could get them finished, I could probably fix my current financial state.
Please note that in my country (Hungary), public mental health care is nearly nonexistent, and they’re only existing so the state can point to it. I don’t have any money for the private stuff, and I have higher priority health concerns that would benefit from higher-quality care (e.g. switching anti-seizure medications as my current doctor ignores its side effects).
For me, I overcame fear of failure by failing. I have tried all sorts of things: create, develop skills, complete major tasks, etc. Lots of them failed, while some were successful. What I learned was in most cases, unless the matter is detrimental to well-being, failure is fine. If I want to learn to play the solo for …And Justice for All, but all I was able to get to was the solo for Nutshell by Alice in Chains, that’s fine. I learned a lot in the process and still was able to play a solo, even if not the one I wanted. I also found a talent for learning scales and improvising lead guitar, something I had no intention of doing from the start. In this, I also learned to appreciate mistakes. While some mistakes can be harmful or embarrassing, others are pretty cool. They let me learn knew ways of doing things that I wouldn’t have come up with by just thinking. Using the guitar example again, I wanted to see if I could imitate Smashing Pumpkins’ distortion because I love it. I wasn’t able to, but in the process, I learned a lot about sound effects and came up with a distortion of my own that I really like. I wouldn’t have been able to create that or even know I wanted it without just making an attempt.
A recent “failure” I had was to start going to the gym and gain 15 lbs. I failed because I got overwhelmed with other matters and even got bronchitis for 1.5 weeks. However, there are lessons in this failure. I learned about my capacities and motivations, and can now develop strategies to try the next time I make an attempt to do the same thing again. There was no serious harm that came from the attempt and failure, just lessons.
Maybe reframing it in a way that says, “I’m going to try and see what happens,” rather than saying, “I am going to succeed or fail,” could help. I’m going to try allows for a lot of possibilities, some that you might not even have considered. I’m going to succeed or fail is limiting you to only two options, and the good one (succeed) is improbable because there is only one way to succeed, but there are infinity ways to fail.
In fact, getting meta, I don’t know if this comment will succeed at helping you, or fail to do so. However, I made an attempt and got to review my experience with failures, learning more about myself. Maybe other people will comment and I could learn even more, or maybe I’ll keep thinking about this and develop a more helpful perspective. Perhaps something good and unexpected will come from it. Either way, it’s a net positive.
Have you tried being perfect in all ways?
Ha! Perfect minds think alike. I came to make the same comment!
Have you tried journaling?
It is an accessible way to let go of emotional burden.
- Write about how are you feeling in the moment. If you are a guy note where in your body do you feel that emotion. Emotional wheel with a list of words is very helpful to broaden the emotional vocabulary.
emotional wheel that I personally used
- Accept that you are feeling that way. It’s not wrong to feel human emotion as you are a human.
- Find out why are you feeling that way. What is the cause of the emotion?
- What is an appropriate response to that emotion? Running away or being brave?
Going for a walk or shutting down all distractions and closing your eyes and then taking the steps described above will also help.
Hey, everyone is allowed to fail. ^Except ^me
I have not just a fear of failure but a fear of sabotage, internally and externally, given all our society runs on exclusive access and privilege. Any time I’m in a chair when the music stops, I’m responsible for the poor sod fed to the grinder.
So yeah, I don’t compete, ever.
And that’s okay. Society was never trying to be fair or a good-faith society. It’s all coming crashing down around us, because the guys at the top couldn’t stop their own greed and excess, couldn’t see the long game, even for their own children.
You and I didn’t really fail if we never had a fighting chance.
That said, do a thing you like and keep doing it, disregarding failure, and eventually you’ll find you are a high-ranking expert and have been maintaining a illustrious career for the last decade and a few of your opuses are on Wikipedia as a definitive example of a specific period style, maybe the Ur-example of a trend in the field. As Chuck Jones noted, every artist has a hundred thousand bad drawings in them they have to draw out.
If you ever figure it out, let me know.
The only true failure is not trying. Everything else is a learning opportunity.
That’s the neat part, you don’t!
Failing is a part of success. You learn what didn’t work, refine your technique, and try again.
If all you do is succeed, you don’t know why and can’t learn from it.
Success is the work of trying and failing, repeatedly, until what you’re doing doesn’t look like failing to outsiders. But even then you know what was wrong with your successes.
Smaller tasks that way if a failure happens it has a smaller impact.
Blame solar flares.
Make your goal to procrastinate. So you either succeed at procrastinating and feel good; or you fail at trying to always procrastinate, like you always do, and end up with a finished product.
By forcing myself to do something if it’s something I can do. Basically this only works with video games since no matter how hard I try I can’t apply it to a job, relationship, being a functional human being.
By knowing that whatever choice I make was with the best intentions and by making lots of mistakes. A beach is more than one grain of sand.
When i work on personal Projects, i think to myself : the worst that can happen is that i learn something(from mistakes)
Also, you’re not alone. It happens to most of the world. Even people who are not autistic.
Identifying your problem and wanting to change is a huge step that many people don’t reach. It might take a long time to get where you want to be, but realize you have made great progress.