Is the Fear of Failure Affecting Your Vision?
I started my journey 3 years ago. I left Italy, my job, my friends, and I moved to London with the aim of turning my vision into a successful startup.
I’m probably the last person to be compared to artists (I’ve always been bad in any form of art). Yet, I feel I have in common with them the same unstoppable desire of creating, from an inner vision, something for others.
You can guess then, that the choice I had in front of me was between suffocating this inner flame or following it and jumping into something much bigger than me. Looking back, it wasn’t even a choice!
This was the first step that led me to the Startup World. I wasn’t remotely prepared for the level of complexity I had to face. I am probably still not. In the last years, I have improved in many ways. I have overcome fears and filled gaps. I pushed myself to a level beyond what I would have ever imagined when I left Italy. And obviously, it is still not enough. But what I truly understood is that leading a startup to success is above all an inner challenge. All the odds are against you, nothing works, and despite it, you have to keep putting your whole self into something that no one else believes possible.
Things like ‘the market’, ‘competitors’, ‘inexperience’ are all obstacles along the way, but they are not the real challenge. I believe determination and an extraordinary work ethic can overcome every problem. But to stick to these components, you need to put all of yourself into what you are trying to achieve. And to do this, you have to face your one enemy: the fear of failure.
Chasing your dreams is incredibly difficult. Because you know that to achieve them, you will have to put all of yourself into something with a very high chance of failure.
We ask ourselves: “What happens if I put all of myself into that thing and I fail”?
And this question terrifies us. Because putting your whole self into something and failing means discovering that you won’t measure up to your dreams. It is a distressing thought, from which we very often flee.
It is like trying to pour water from one cup to another. For it not to spill, we must pour it with decisiveness, accepting the risk of making a mess on the ground. If we don’t take that risk, or if we are afraid of spilling the water, this will lead to an insecure movement. And the water will undoubtedly spill.
Likewise, the fear of failure leads to failure itself.
When we lose our inner challenge, and we fail to live with this fear, we pull back. And from that moment starts a series of actions that lead inevitably to this fatality.
We justify our mistakes by looking at external factors. We reduce our commitment. We stop following our instinct. We start accepting downward compromises that we know will lead to nothing.
In a few words: we don’t put all of ourselves to chase our dream.
And before we know it, our vision will have turned into a ‘serial product’ that can be purchased in any fast-food restaurant for $5.99.
In the last 3 years, I made an infinite number of mistakes and collected a lot of rejections. Products changed, strategies too, but I am still all-in with my vision. If it fails, it will mean I do not measure up to my dreams. No excuses. No parachute.
Since I accepted this scary truth, my mindset changed completely, and I started to work better than I ever did. I now have the paradoxical awareness that I am on the right path. Even if the numbers don’t show that yet.
