Fear of Failure: Why It Grips You and How to Act While Still Afraid

For many years I taught at the Faculty of Economics, and I often told my students how differently their classmates reacted after failing an exam. Some smiled, said “thank you” and went on with their day. Others cried over their fate for days or even weeks, and it often started right there in my office. The same exam, the same grade, and two completely different experiences. As I wrote in my book, so much depends on how we see what happens to us.

I have come to a simple belief about this: in my reality there are no mistakes, only lessons we learn from. I still call them mistakes, because that is the word we were taught. In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, fear is the critical obstacle on the way out of the comfort zone, and fear of failure is one of its strongest forms. Here is why it grips us, what it costs, and how to act while you are still afraid.

What is fear of failure?

Fear of failure is the anxious expectation of failing, and above all of what failing might mean for you. That is the surprising part: we are rarely afraid of the failure itself. When psychologist David Conroy and his colleagues developed a questionnaire on fear of failure with 544 university students, they identified five consequences people dread: shame and embarrassment, thinking less of themselves, an uncertain future, important people losing interest in them, and upsetting important people¹.

Read that list again and notice how many of the five are about other people. That is why fear of failure so often feels like a fear of being seen.

Signs fear of failure is holding you back

You might recognise yourself in a few of these:

• you wait to feel ready, and the ready moment never comes
• you prepare endlessly, but rarely send, launch or say the thing out loud
• your goals are about what to avoid (“I mustn't embarrass myself”) rather than what you want
• you lower your expectations in advance, so that nobody, including you, can be disappointed
• you replay a small mistake for days, as if it said something about who you are

If fear has already turned into postponing and quiet excuses, you may also recognise yourself in self-sabotage.

What is the root cause of fear of failure?

Nobody is born afraid of failing. A toddler learning to walk falls, gets up and falls again without a trace of shame. We learn the fear later, usually from people who love us. In my book I wrote that parents often fear for us instead of simply loving us, and often want us to succeed where they themselves failed. A child who tries to be good enough is, in a way, trying to become perfect in order to earn love. Research points the same way. Studying university students and their parents, Andrew Elliot and Todd Thrash found that fear of failure tends to run in families; with mothers, part of the link was explained by what the researchers call love withdrawal².

School and culture add their share, wherever a mistake means a red mark rather than information. Perfectionism often travels with fear of failure and deserves its own article, but notice when “it has to be perfect” really means “I'm afraid to be seen failing”. So if failure frightens you, nothing is wrong with you. You learned it, which means you can learn something else too.

What fear of failure really costs: the life you don't try

As an economist, I see a hidden cost here. We carefully count the price of failing, and almost never the price of not trying. Psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec describe how that price grows with time: our actions bring more regret in the short term, but our inactions bring more regret in the long run³.

So I will ask the question from the book again. When did you accept that you are too old for this or that? Who is to say you shouldn't change your career even in your sixties? Fear of failure likes to dress up as being realistic, while the years quietly pass.

Near the end of their lives, people regret the things they didn’t do more than the things they did.

What happiness research says about fear of failure

As someone who has spent many years studying happiness, I am most struck by the research on goals. Andrew Elliot and Marcy Church found that students who feared failure tended to set goals about not doing worse than others, and those goals were linked to less enjoyment of learning and lower grades⁴. In another study, people whose personal goals were more often about avoiding something reported lower well-being, which also declined over the semester⁵. Running away from failure is a tiring way to live.

We are also poor forecasters of our own pain. In six studies, Daniel Gilbert, Timothy Wilson and their colleagues found that people overestimated how long they would feel bad after a romantic break-up, not getting tenure or being turned down for a job. They overlooked the mental processes that help us recover, which the authors call the psychological immune system⁶.

And kindness turns out to help, not hinder. Kristin Neff and her colleagues found that more self-compassionate students were less afraid of failure, and among students who felt they had failed a midterm, the more self-compassionate relied less on avoidance to cope⁷. In experiments by Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, people encouraged to treat themselves with compassion after failing a difficult test went on to study longer for the next one⁸. Being gentle with yourself is not letting yourself off the hook. It is what makes trying again bearable.

How to overcome fear of failure: seven gentle steps

You don't overcome fear of failure by waiting until you feel brave. You overcome it the way you learned it: in small moments, repeated. These are the steps I use myself.

1. Name the real fear. Is it shame, thinking less of yourself, an uncertain future, losing someone's interest or upsetting someone? Write it down in one sentence. A named fear is smaller than a vague one.
2. Ask: fear or love? In my book I suggest asking, in every situation, whether you are acting out of fear or out of love. Love moves you towards something; fear only keeps you away from something.
3. Picture the day after. If it goes wrong, what will you actually do the next morning? Research suggests you will probably recover sooner than you expect. Write down your plan B and notice what happens to the fear.
4. Turn “don't fail” into “I want to learn”. Instead of “I mustn't embarrass myself in this presentation”, try “I want to learn to present my ideas clearly.” Goals that move you towards something are kinder fuel than goals that run from something.
5. Take the smallest real step while you're still afraid. Send one email, make one call, write one page. Don't wait for the fear to leave first; it often grows quieter once you begin.
6. Replace worry with one action. As I asked in my book: have you ever solved a difficult situation by worrying alone? Action might help; worry won't. When you catch yourself worrying, ask what one thing you can do today.
7. Treat mistakes as lessons, not verdicts. After a setback, ask what it taught you and what you will do differently next time. Then speak to yourself like the student who smiled, said “thank you” and walked on.

Can you get rid of fear of failure for good?

Honestly, probably not, and you don't need to. In my book I wrote that the goal is not to eliminate fear completely; a life without any adrenaline wouldn't be much fun either. What changes is your relationship with fear. Each time you act despite it, you discover that most of your fears were bigger in your head than in reality, and the next step becomes a little easier.

So instead of asking how to remove your fear of failure, ask how you can take the next step with it. Fear may come along. It just doesn't get to decide.

Very often, fear of failure turns out to be fear of disappointing others. If that is your story, the next step is learning how to stop people pleasing. And if you would like to practise courage together with women who walk the same path, that is the heart of my programme Permission for Life. Remember the students in my office: the exam was the same. What a failure means for your life is still, to a large extent, yours to decide.