Ask HN: How do you overcome fear of failure?

Simple.

Make it safe to fail. Then you can do it over and over and call it "iterating". Measure your metrics and improve them.

That's how you get repeatable success.

Anyone who tries, fails at some point.

Realize that you can't learn and grow unless you try. The only real failure is not trying.

I like this short little commercial... sums up "failure" just right.

* Failure: The Secret to Success - A Honda Documentary - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVig5H7UbM

You win or you learn. Stop thinking about it like a bad thing.

Specifics?

* Do team reviews after every release. Do more formal reviews every quarter. If you aren't writing and reading pages of opinions on what is going well or what isn't... how would you learn? Blindly following orders is a great way to not win and not learn. Engage. Don't keep people on the team who aren't opinionated and engaged.

* Keep a journal. Review it every so often. Be clear with your goals, take stock of what went right and what didn't. You'll get some right, you'll get some wrong... keep trying. Every week you get some wins... and some losses... acknowledge the small things that build up to make larger things.

* Talk with other people doing similar work. (Don't bitch to friends or coworkers about personal issues... Talk with a shrink for that.) Strive to learn and master all you can about what you set out to do. If you're doing it alone in your basement... not going to conferences, not going to meet-ups, ... it's going to take you longer to optimize. Look for opportunities to "fail" where it won't matter... small side projects, lectures, meet-ups etc. Learn from others, strive to teach others what you learned. Talking it out is a great way to "test" ideas to prevent failure.

If your thing is successful, would the world be a better place? If so, launch it. There's nothing to be embarrassed about if it doesn't get traction.

If not, don't launch it. Getting traction in that scenario wouldn't constitute a success or benefit anyone.

Also, the idea of products blowing up overnight is basically a myth. No matter how good your thing is, expect no one to use it for quite a while.

There is no life without struggle

I recognize that it might fail and ensure that failing is not the end of the world. If the project does fail then I make sure I learn from it for future projects. I wrote a blog post on a failed project a while back that covers some of this. Recognizing why you failed and learning from it is all that matters: https://hungryadmin.com/a-failed-projects-postmortem.html

Realise that by not risking failure, you fail automatically.

I would not even call it a failure, some things are infeasible, economically non-viable, etc. Try to de-risk projects to see if they fall into those categories. Figure out the major barriers and try to de-risk them one by one. If you run into a real barrier, also don't hesitate to end the project. Sometimes "failure" is the best option.

Me personally? I never had that fear. I launched many things, and like with everybody else who launches things, most of them failed.

If you find yourself unable to launch stuff because of that specific fear, then I would say it has some extremely personal reasoning behind it, and maybe introspection would be helpful. Things that deeply ingrained are usually related to childhood and or family.

Ironically, I'd probably suggest some psychedelics as the fastest way to get to the bottom of it.

Just keep reminding yourself that if you never try, you've already failed.

You can't fail if you don't try at all. But you can't either succeed.

First, cost/benefit analysis to see if it's worth the effort (mental, financial, time).

If so, I commit to the project publicly and preferably make other people dependent on its success, because:

Fear of failing others > fear of my own failure.

I like lighting fires under my ass. Being chill and "whatever, it's a learning curve" doesn't help me get things done.

Some people have irrational fears. But let's assume that your fear is rational. Failure in itself is not a bad thing. It's the only way to improve. Someone told me there is a saying in the game of go (and I bet in other games too ;-) ) When you first start learning, your strategy should be to lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible.

Even still, in the game of go (and many other games), some people are afraid to lose. They never play people who are better than them. Why do you suppose that is? It is a self defeating strategy because by never losing, they never improve. What could possibly be so important about a game of go that stops these people from allowing themselves to lose?

I think if you answer that question, you will be well on your way to answering your original question.

P.S. When I was teaching English as a foreign language, I often taught adults. The biggest impediment I found for adults learning a foreign language was the fear to appear childish. With such a fear, learning a new language is almost impossible.

Just jump into the task. Less thinking, more action.

Remember after every failure you are richer - experience is gold and no1 can take it away from you.

You never learn faster or better than through making mistakes. Factor the mistakes in, expect to make them and be prepared for them.

Mistakes/failures are just opportunities to learn a poignant point about how to do it better.

Just jump right into it. If it fails then look and think what failed, then fix it and try again. Look how many space missions started up with explosions. We wouldn't be where we are if someone decide to stop trying after first failure.

This passage from raptitude post always sticks in my head, comparing 2 mental approaches to a disgusting part of a cleaning job he was squeamish about, basically practice to feel & observe the fear but do not resist or react to it:

http://www.raptitude.com/2010/08/how-to-make-life-agreeable/

>...It usually involved holding your breath and averting your eyes as you scoop out the food-slime and hurriedly direct it toward the garbage bin, bracing yourself throughout, as if you’re jumping into icy water.

It’s the same strategy a wide-eyed Fear Factor contestant uses as he chomps frantically on the June bug in his mouth — he doesn’t want to confront it, he wants to escape it.

That method didn’t work for me, it just made me more aware of how awful it was. As soon as I tackled one sink, I began dreading the next room.

I don’t remember when it clicked, but after not too many kitchens, I learned the secret:

Let it feel like whatever it feels like.

Just do it and let it have its way with you. Turn toward it, not away.

Whenever I came to a gunked-up drain, I just scooped it out without rushing. I reached into the drain with no more reluctance than I would have reaching into a cookie jar. I looked at the mess with a stoic curiosity, allowing the swollen noodles and bread-mush to rest freely in my fingers for the two or three unhurried seconds it took to transfer them to the garbage can.

As long as I wasn’t rushing or trying not to touch it, it was painless. It wasn’t worth trying to escape.

I used to have massive fear of failure. Now I treat everything as an experiment. The point of the exercise is not to "make a million bucks" or "create a business" or even "get some customers".

The point of the exercise is to learn. I will try doing this thing in this way. If that doesn't work, I haven't failed, I've just learned that doing that thing in that way at that time doesn't work.

Hopefully I've also learned some other stuff that will make my next experiment more financially productive ;)

To clarify, this is about launching. I imagine many other people on HN have their own things they'd like to launch but are afraid to. This isn't about motivation to create but rather to show your work and ask for money.

I think the only way is to actually embrace failure. Most things that are worth doing have a gigantic chance of failure statistically, and I don't just mean startups. Marriages fail at astonishing rates, most friendships aren't life long friendships.

I think it's important to just say "I want to do this, even if I fail," and really believe that it'll have been worth doing even if you fail.

Right now, my team and I are building a startup that sells fertilizer and seed in rural sub-saharan Africa. On credit. What we're doing is crazy and has all of the challenges of any other startup, but we're also doing it with all of the challenges that operating in Kenya has.

Just believe it's worth doing.

the one trick I have done was to read more and come to know the Failure stories ....avoid what happened and try taking chances.

the other one...remembering " Fear Fear itself"

Lastly, just get the price of failure ready (save the failure coins) and delve into the risk...

One approach I've taken is to commit to launching irrespective of outcome. I was inspired by Pieter Levels launching 12 startups in 12 months: https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/

Like anything, it gets easier the more you do it. Try to launch things which you aren't passionate about so have less invested—with less pressure, you can start to build your launch muscles.

Fail enough, and you'll no longer be afraid of it.

Fear of failure got nothing Fear of regret.

I can learn far more from failure than regret. Regrets is fills of what ifs. Where as failure is I'm one step closer to my goal.

I have an additional question - does any of you thinking or not thinking about failure, ever consider or fear retirement (and the effect of failure(s) on the quality of retirement) ? If yes, how do you cope with it?

* Not demanding much from yourself. * Accepting yourself. * Doing something for enjoyment rather than to prove to someone else. * And finally, no one knows your answer, you got to find out yourself by trying different things.