FAILURE IS AN OPTION
Failing sucks, but it happens – so learn how to deal with it
Afew years ago, in a job going nowhere fast, I decided to have a crack at a different industry. After weeks of laborious War And Peace-length applications, I was invited for an interview and tasked with giving a presentation. On e-football. To be clear, I’ve never owned a Playstation or an Xbox. Nor have I ever followed a real football tournament. In the 180 seconds that followed, I felt as if I was perilously perched on the edge of a 15-metre diving board, ready to fall. Stomach churning and mind buzzing, I did the only thing I thought I could: I typed a reply, politely making my apologies, and withdrew from the process. Why? Because I was shit scared I’d fail. ‘Our brains have evolved to be particularly adept at zoning in on the potential negative outcomes of our actions,’ says neuroscientist Dr Rick Hanson. It’s a phenomenon demonstrated in a renowned 1998 study by Ohio State University, where researchers found that negative images prompted more electrical activity in the brain than positive ones. ‘Your brain is engineered to be triggered by threats, perceived or otherwise,’ says Dr Hanson. ‘It’s why, after glancing at faces for just a tenth of a second, participants fixated on angry or threatening ones, while barely noticing those that looked happy.’ It’s this negativity bias, found to occur in babies as young as six months old, that makes you so afraid of what could go wrong. Indeed, as soon as you take on something potentially fuck-up-able, the brain senses a threat and triggers the release of stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. This prompts your body to enter fight-or-flight mode, which – according to Professor Gregory Berns, neuroeconomist at Emory University, US – switches off ‘exploratory activity and risk-taking’. Essentially, you become blind to the benefits of a new experience, regardless of how beneficial it could be for your career, relationship, health, happiness – or all of the above. ‘We fear failure for two reasons,’ says Dr Omar Yousef, lecturer in psychology at the University of Bath. ‘First, we’ve evolved to see social acceptance and status as critical to survival, so the thought of damaging your reputation among your peers is seen as a huge danger when it comes to facing a risky situation. Second, we’ve learned to understand failure as an unpleasant experience that’s likely to prompt feelings of
shame and hurt – a blow to your self-esteem.’ So fear is a reflex that protects you when you’re faced with failure. But while ‘proceed with caution’ may well have been a useful life mantra for our hunter-gatherer predecessors, in a world where getting ahead in work or life means overcoming gargantuan challenges like, you know, a 10-minute presentation on the wants of middle-aged gamers, it can be pretty damaging. So how do you rein in that neggy voice? If failure itself is a real prospect, and our fear of it an innate chemical response, surely it’s game over? Well, not necessarily. There are things you can do to dial down that default dread. It sounds facile, but embrace the little wins – those so small you wouldn’t even bother humble-bragging about them on your socials. When you remember to send a birthday card, when you nail life admin you’ve been putting off, when you keep a houseplant alive for longer than a month. ‘Hold that small feeling of achievement in your mind for 10 to 15 seconds – long enough for you to actually register it,’ Dr Hanson suggests. This is key because, while bad experiences are stored to memory almost immediately, positives take around 12 seconds to stick. So you’re training your brain to buy into positives, such as the upside of risk. It’s also time to redefine failure on your own terms. We’ve all been conditioned to perceive success in a certain way, which then makes you believe the idea of shifting those boundaries is outand-out failure. ‘A way to stop fearing failure is to stop seeing it by the standards you may have been brought up with,’ says psychotherapist Hilda Burke. Breaking up with someone who’s not right for you isn’t failing at the relationship, just like not being offered a job because it wasn’t the best fit wouldn’t have been a failure on my part. It’s certainly a mentality I wish I’d had when it came to that presentation. Even if I had embarrassed myself to the point of red-faced shame, I’d have proven that I was capable of stepping up to a challenge, which is surely the first step to success in any new career. If you’re still sticking with the run-as-fast-as-you-can-in-theopposite-direction approach (oh, I hear you), try bringing in a third party. ‘Oxytocin is produced when we feel close – physically or emotionally – to another person, and it has a soothing effect on the brain, helping to alleviate some of the fear,’ says Dr Hanson. But look beyond your usual suspects, suggests executive coach Dr Sally Ann Law. ‘Choose someone outside of your immediate circle,’ she says. ‘You’re more likely to dismiss your mum’s well-intentioned “of course you can do it” than you would someone you consider to have objectivity and authority.’ Have a coffee with the former boss you admired or try talking to someone older than you who’s been there and done that. And reframing fear as a potentially motivating tool could make all the difference. According to a study by the University of Bath, gym-goers were more motivated by their fear of failing – struggling to push past the burn or not improving fitness levels – than by the thought of their goals. Ultimately, the instinct to see the negatives is deeply ingrained in all of us. ‘Negative thoughts and small doses of anxiety are a natural part of life,’ says life coach Vanessa Loder. ‘Your job is to manage them. See the beating heart and dry mouth as a sign that you’re preparing to tackle your next challenge.’ Sure, striking out alone is terrifying, but Everest isn’t going to climb itself, is it?