"Until we come to terms with the fact that failure is a normal part of the process, we will be paralyzed by fear and doubt."
It’s that time of year.
We are closing the curtain on 2024 and gearing up for 2025. If you are planning, hoping, and dreaming about what the next 12 months could hold for you and the people you lead, then one hurdle you will face is fear. Specifically, fear of failure.
I thought I would share an excerpt from one of the chapters from my book [re]build: Moving Past Fear to Find Purpose for this week’s Lessons in Leadership.
I hope it helps you move into 2025.
Detours
Things will not always go according to plan. You could have written that sentence. This is not news to anyone. You have experienced things out of your control that have redirected your life and plans. These unexpected plot twists in our lives, good or bad, can be a catalyst for change.
If you are a serial planner, these unwanted events may send you in a death spiral. All of your plans, all of your hopes, and all of your dreams, up in smoke! For most of us, depending on the event itself, these are merely inconveniences that, if we respond well, can be overcome without much change to the big picture.
My experience has taught me that one of the biggest determining factors in navigating the unexpected is how much we plan our response to as many “what-ifs” as we can. There is no way you can think through or plan for every scenario - otherwise, nothing would be unexpected. If we think through some of the likely problems we may face or potential problems we may encounter, even if they are different than we imagined, we will have a partially formed response. It's like having an emergency bag packed. You have some non-perishables, water, radio, batteries, etc. Now is there a chance you may encounter a need? Sure. Are you better off because you put some forethought into possible scenarios? One hundred percent yes.
Detours, Breakdowns, and Wrong Turns
The Skating Place. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent there as a kid. What the disco was in the 70’s is what the skating rink was in the town I grew up in. It was the social hub, at least for my circle of friends. My friends and I were there ALL the time. It’s where we formed friendships, hung out, got in trouble, talked about the girls there who we were never going to have the nerve to talk to, and in a lot of ways, it’s where we grew up.
I remember one time my friend John and I decided we wanted to have our own private party at the skating rink so we could play the music WE wanted with all our friends. The owner made a deal with us. If we could sell “x” number of tickets, if memory serves it was 200, we could host our own private party, and John and I could be the DJs for the night.
This was big! We immediately turned into teenage club promoters. We talked to everyone we knew and cast a vision for what was clearly going to be the most epic night in the history of The Skating Place! Think Club 54 on wheels! We were going to party like it was 1999! (It was actually 1987… but if you get a chance to reference a Prince song you do it!) If you weren’t there, you were in real danger of missing out on THE event of our high school experience.
Word spread like wildfire. This was going to be THE event on a Thursday summer night in a small town in Central Illinois for teens between the ages of 14-19. We had pulled it off! In an age with no cellphones, social media, or internet, we planned, promoted, and sold out an event for our peers. It was going to rock! All that was left to do was show up.
That’s it.
Just show up.
That’s all I had to do.
The afternoon of the party, my friends and I were driving around listening to music, which is what most of our summer days consisted of. As I remember it was a perfect day. Blue sky, no wind or humidity, Oingo Boingo CDs playing, and the party of our lives in just a few hours.
We had gone to a friend’s house a little outside of town and had been hanging out there for a little while and decided we had better leave to go get ready for the night. Like any self-respecting sixteen-year-old skating party promoter in the late 80’s, my time management skills were not honed to a fine point just yet and I was going to have to really move to make it on time to the party I had helped plan and promote!
We were on the road for about a mile when one of the guys in the car asked. “What’s that ticking noise?” I listened for a minute. “No Idea,” I said as I turned the radio up a little and kept on driving.
After a few minutes, the ticking was noticeable above the raised volume. “It has to be because now I’m listening for it.” I thought as I turned the volume up a little more. “It sounds like it’s getting louder," my friend in the backseat said. He wasn’t wrong, but I had a solution: I had more volume to give! I turned it up as loud as I could while still sounding decent. That worked for a few minutes until my friend in the backseat said, “Hey man, I think your car's on fire.” I’m still impressed by how calmly he said that.
I checked my rearview mirror and saw black smoke billowing out behind the car. I immediately turned the stereo down to hear BANG. BANG. BANG. Now I’ve never been a certified mechanic, but I knew that couldn't be good. I pulled into the nearest driveway. When we got out, I could see oil POURING out from under the car. I had thrown a rod through my oil pan. If you aren’t mechanically inclined, I’ll explain it like this. My engine was done. My car was going to need to be towed.
With the lack of “wiggle room” in my schedule, I didn’t have time for this! I was going to miss my own party! I’m 16, cell phones were only for guys with Rolls Royces (think 16 Candles), miles from home, no way to get to the party, and I’m running out of time. I run up the driveway to ask to use the phone to call my parents to figure this thing out. I make the call. My dad, who didn’t have the same sense of urgency regarding roller skating as I did, wanted to talk about the car and what might have happened. Can we talk about this later? MY party is about to happen without me. Priorities, Dad! He tells me he will drive out to me and arrange for a tow truck to meet us there. As he rolls out the plan, the hope of me making the party fades.
I failed! I planned THE event of the year for my friends and now I wasn't going to be there to see it. It’s not just about me either, it’s me and the friends that were riding with me that are going to miss it. As I’m walking back outside to talk this over with my friends and tell them we aren’t making the party, I see them getting in the car of my friend we were just visiting. He was driving by on his way to the party and stopped by to pick them up when he saw them on the side of the road. They tell me they hope to see me at the party, MY party, and off they go.
Watching Our Dreams Drive Away
We’ve all been there, metaphorically at least. Standing on the side of the road as our hopes and dreams disappear over the horizon with our friends. As we watch the thing we had hoped for, dreamed about, and sacrificed for fade away, the sting of failure becomes all too real. We begin to second-guess all the decisions we made that brought us to that point. “What ifs” and “If onlys” come at us fast and furious.
The temptation is to see ourselves as victims of circumstance and use those circumstances as a built-in excuse to not keep pressing on.
Who would blame you for giving up? You’ve been through so much. Life has been hard if it’s been anything for you.
We say things like, “I guess it’s just not meant to be.” What we really mean by that is, “I tried. It didn’t work (at first). I’ll go back to what’s safe.” Just like that, we abandon the hopes and dreams that once energized us and gave us hope. We settle for a life of routine and predictability because it’s safe. We remember the pain of watching those around us cruise off to the party we had hoped to be at while our lives and dreams are broken down on the side of the road. We abandon it because it hurts to fail. It hurts our pride, our confidence; our inner voice shouts, “See, I knew that wasn’t going to work!”
Until we come to terms with the fact that failure is a normal part of the process, we will be paralyzed by fear and doubt. We will play it safe because fear is something to be avoided, not something to prepare for and push past.
If I’m being totally honest, I had to pause and read that again myself. This is a constant struggle for me. If I had to name my biggest struggle when it comes to pursuing my passions, taking risks, or trying something new, it is generally fear. In particular, a fear of failure. I don’t think I’m alone in this struggle. Like anyone else, I don’t want to crash and burn. I don’t want to be the poster child for “what not to do.” I hear guys talk about not caring what anyone thinks or about how fear of failure doesn’t affect them.
That’s not my story.
Not. Even. Close.
I have voices of fear and doubt that try to stop me from doing anything “risky”. I hear the voices inside my head telling me other people have already done what I want to do and have done it better. I hear the voices tell me if I try to do “x,” everyone will laugh at me when, not if, I fail. I hear them tell me to play it safe, don’t make waves, fly under the radar and things will be smoother for me. They say it’s better to fly under the radar and eek my way through life than it is to try something big and crash big time.
Fear sucks.
It sucks the wind out of your sails. It sucks the joy out of any endeavor. It sucks the adventure out of life. It sucks the energy you’ll need to [re]build your life.
Fear is like a muscle. Whenever you exercise it, it will get stronger. You know this is true. You’ve experienced it. In fact, it’s exactly the reason you still haven’t had that hard conversation you’ve been putting off for a long time. It’s easier to not think about it now than to convince yourself to have that talk. When we let fear talk us out of doing something, it gets harder to come back from that the next time.
There is hope though.
When we push through fear, we realize it is often lying to us. It tells us we will fail and we will not recover from it. Unless we are talking about packing a parachute poorly, it is rarely the case.
Don’t get me wrong, you will fail. Spectacularly. It will sting. You will be embarrassed.
But.
It won’t define you.
You start a business. It fails.
Ok.
Learn the lesson. Start another one.
You write a book 3 people read.
Write another one. Shoot for 6 people. You’ve doubled your readers!
You do stand-up at an open mic night and you bomb.
Laugh. That’s funny.
It may not feel like it at the moment, but you’ll find something about it if you look hard enough that will not only make you laugh but make you better.
I have spoken in front of hundreds of crowds. I have spoken to a room of thousands of people and felt like I held them in the palm of my hand. They would laugh at all the right places with the exact right amount of vigor. I have also spoken to groups with less than 20 people and they could not have cared less about anything I was saying. I’ve also had that flipped, dying in front of large groups and killing it with a small crowd.
I tell you that because I know what it feels like to fail. I mean BOMB! It’s rough. Most of the time I knew it immediately. When you talk in front of an audience you know in the first few minutes whether they are “with you” or not. When they are not, a 35-40 minute talk feels looooooooooooong. I’ve been there. I hated it. I still cringe thinking about it. It hurt. It sucked. I don’t want to feel like that again.
One way to ensure it doesn’t ever happen again is to never speak again.
Or…
I could use it to get better. I chose to learn from those hard experiences and got better at what I do. I have learned about how the dynamic of a space impacts an audience. I’ve learned how to connect with difficult audiences better. Does this mean it will never go bad again? No. Does it mean that it happens far less frequently? Yes! There is still a low-key fear that I could bomb every time I speak, but history has taught me that it is not as likely anymore.
Fear would use my failures to keep me from doing the thing that I love. Instead, I used my failures to get better and enjoy what I do even more.
All Skate Please. All Skate
I made it.
I know you have been on the edge of your seat wondering about the skating party. I was a little late, but I made it to the party! It was everything I imagined it would be. All of my friends roller skating to all of our favorite music having the time of our life.
My dad showed up and told me to take his car to the party and he would wait there for the tow truck. For those of you keeping score, my dad was awesome. He was the most selfless person I’ve ever known. I’m sure he had other things he would have rather been doing that night, but he knew how important that party was to me.
Sometimes the best way to prepare for the worst is to have the best people around you.
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