How the Fear of Failure Fails You

Three months before my farewell, and three months before my board exams, I was on Pinterest, looking for lehengas. Our school had a tradition of honouring two people, a girl and a boy with the title of Ms. And Mr. CV at the farewell event. I wanted that title more than anything, my final achievement, my swan song before I left school. See, our theme was “Indian Mela” and I was hell bent on being the best dressed at the event. So I browsed through at least 500 designs, patterns and colours, spent hours at shops looking for just the right material. The judgment criteria also had a catwalk as a part of the process. So I chose my song and practiced my walk, yes my 'catwalk’ perfected to every last step 30 days before the event. I was so afraid of losing to anyone, that I worked foolishly harder than anyone. On the D-day, I was so nervous that I turned at the wrong beat and my entire sequence was ruined. What’s worse was my arch-nemesis won Ms.Cv and she just showed up on stage and did “bhangda’. I was furious and so upset that I ruined my entire farewell and went home early, crying. 40 or so hours wasted before my board exams just so that I could have the “perfect’ ending. My fear of having a pitiful ending did not save me as it acted as an insecurity nagging me constantly. So I overcompensated unnecessarily and my fear translated to a prophecy. My nightmare turned to a reality.

 I realised this only a year later when I could finally think about this event with a clear head. my incessant need to perfect every minuscule detail of my life had failed me. I overworked myself for the smallest projects only to be greeted by failure. I couldn’t pin down what I was doing wrong, until  TiE. TiE was an entrepreneurship program I had taken part in. As a part of the program we had to come up with a start up idea.  And one of our mentors told us, 99% of the startups fail because they try to solve many problems in an average manner rather than solve one problem efficiently. I looked down at my notebook with my scribbled ideas. All my app ideas were solving at least ten problems with a vague theory supporting their feasibility. I was dumbfounded. I did not know what to pursue. My team and I met up at a Starbucks one day tofigure out our startup idea. While drinking coffee, one of my teammates had burned her tongue. And she said, “hey, why don’t we come up with a product that solves burning tongues”. At first I was very sceptical about this idea, but I worked on the solution nevertheless. And a simple solution to the recurring and small problem such as a burnt tongue brought us the second prize in the competition and this pitch also landed me a chance to go to the incubator at Ryerson sandbox. Surprised at the success of this simple solution to this simple problem, I realised the flaw of my planning, expectations and goals. 

Aiming too far is absolutely okay, even encouraged. But the attitude with which you approach that aim is what makes the difference. If you place so much importance the result of your aim, you will be afraid of the uncertainty that comes with it. Because you have attached so much importance to it, you will be afraid to fail. This result oriented thinking and the idea of succeeding or perfecting everything will make you lose out on the most important aspect of achieving a goal - the process. You will overwork yourself over unnecessary details and miss the important ones. And this fear, like it did to me, will make you overcompensate, strive for excellence in every nook and cranny detail which is absolutely unnecessary. This will compromise your process and ensure your failure, the thing you have been running from. 

So today, I want to talk about the dangers of result oriented thinking and how to overcome it. Results are a thing of the future, and the future is unknown. When something is unknown it is human tendency to assume the worst. Take the shower monster for example, when you close your eyes in the shower, many of us are afraid that a monster is creeping on us, a scary looming ominous monster, or a serial killer. But we’ve never actually seen one. How do you know if the monster that appears in your shower only when you shut your eyes or the monster under your bed is just a fluffy white bundle of clouds with M&M’s for eyes? Or better, why do you think it exists? They exist, and in the worst form possible, because we have a habit of giving substance to our fears and insecurities. We overthink so much about not getting into our university or doing badly at an exam that we give our goals the looks and shapes of deadly flesh eating monster. So instead of running towards your Goal, you’re just running away from it. You’ll say, “if I can’t do it perfectly or if im not going to succeed, I’m not going to do it at all”. Scared of doing badly or not doing it right makes you  binge watch a Netflix show or procrastinate too much. Result oriented thinking or striving for perfectionism not only hinders productivity but leads to many mental health issues like depression and clinical anxiety. 

The key to overcoming this problem, I realised is compromise. We need to compromise our perfectionist ideals and find a middle ground for acceptable work. We need to pursue “good enough” because sometimes that takes us further. When you concentrate on just getting it right, you follow the steps and the process carefully enough without having to worry about the future or unknown contingencies. Just take the Brexit for example, the desire by the parliament to get the perfect Brexit deal with the Eu pushed the deal by four years cost Britain a whopping 77 Billion euros till October including their “divorce payment” to the EU. 

I’ve had two years to practice the pursuit of good enough, and because I'm so competitive, I needed the time. In DP 1, I ran for class representative. I hardly scored any votes. But I opened a idea which targeted a really important flaw in our Student Representation. On those grounds, I campaigned for the next presidential election, not with the premise of winning, but with the premise of making a change. So I concentrated a lot on the process, the campaign and my goals  instead of fishing for votes. And that is exactly why I stand in front of you today, as a President of the SRC. 

Similarly, we all can move a huge step forward by giving ourselves and those around us a break. The pressures that we face from within ourself are pale in comparison to the social and academic pressures we face as we grow in a globally complex world. If we give ourselves the permission to pursue good enough, we will grow as adults who will become future CEO’s and political leaders who are willing to compromise. Schools too can make a huge change by moving away from cultures of fear and moving towards cultures of innovation. Some 300 years later, Voltaire is right still, ‘perfect is the enemy of the good’.  It is urgent that we acknowledge this now, that we change the way we think and the way we behave because if we look at every major issue impacting our planet from climate change to pandemics, from economic inequality to the very future of our democracy, all of those would benefit from a decision making that is good enough, a decision making that doesn’t concentrate on the result of the process.