How to Let Go of Your Fear of Failure

How to Let Go of Your Fear of Failure ❌

“Imagine what cool things you could build if you let go of your own fear of failure. The following exercise will help you do just that.

One of the ways to help remove the fear of failure is to write down the worst things that could happen if your idea doesn’t work out. Expressing your worst fears on paper somehow takes the bite out.

So get a piece of paper. List all the worst things that could happen if your business was to fail. List all of them, even the ones that might be painful to think about. For example, when starting The Budget Fashionista, I was afraid of leaving the comfort of my very stable job as an epidemiologist. When I started digitalundivided, I was afraid of losing the money I made from selling The Budget Fashionista.

Study the list and all the possible failures that could occur. All of them, no matter how small they may seem to you. Then I want you to rip up this list and flush it down the toilet. Nothing in life is without risk, especially success. Sure, you might fail, but then you’ll pivot. Then you’ll fail again, and pivot again. It’s okay. Remember, you got this.

Giving yourself the permission to fail also means giving yourself the permission to be vulnerable. We live in a world where the perception of perfection is often the goal, so we often avoid discussing the path to perfection. The famous photographer Keith Major, who has photographed some of the biggest stars in the world—including Beyoncé, Samuel L. Jackson, even President Clinton—once told me the difference between a great photographer and an okay photographer. It’s not the type of camera or the years of art school. It’s that a great photographer takes a thousand times more photos. They KNOW that most of them won’t turn out, and they take more chances to capture something great.

Like most normal human beings, I’ve failed epically many times in my life. I’ve had enormous setbacks and times where all I wanted to do was fall into a pit with a super-comfortable pillow, my Company Store comforter, and an eighty-inch TV so that I could Netflix and cry for a week. However, it’s from these failures that I had my greatest breakthroughs…

Don’t worry about failure impacting your future success. Some of the most famous white dude founders have failed so much that they’ve made it into an art form. And they STILL got investment…So act like an Entitled white dude and embrace failure as a part of the path to success. Yes, we Builders don’t have many (or for some of us, any) passes, but what we do have is the ability to turn the lessons learned from the fights we’ve survived throughout our lives into the armor to fight for our success.”

For more essential wisdom on building your company from Build the Damn Thing, check it out on Amazon!

Out in the World 🌍

The Yale School of Public Health, my alma mater, did a recent story on my Heinz Award win. You can check it out here.