{"id":18150,"date":"2009-01-20T14:02:53","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T21:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drjimtaylor.com\/blog\/?p=562"},"modified":"2009-01-20T14:02:53","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T21:02:53","slug":"parenting-fear-of-failure-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/parenting-fear-of-failure-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting: Fear of Failure Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my very first Prime Family Alert!<\/em><\/a> newsletter published in April of 2005, I discussed the sad epidemic of fear of failure that was rampant in America then.\u00a0 Well, almost four years later, fear of failure is still the most pervasive and debilitating issue among children I see in my practice and the thousands I have spoken to since. But the reason I want to revisit fear of failure today is because I have discovered a new wrinkle to the fear-of-failure phenomenon that brings greater clarity to the problems that children face in our increasingly achievement-oriented culture.<\/p>\n

What is Fear of Failure?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the heart of fear of failure is the belief held by children that if they fail, in school, sports, the performing arts, or socially, then bad things will happen, for example, they will disappoint their parents, be ostracized by their peer group, experience embarrassment or shame, or feel worthless. Fear of failure typically emerges from messages that children\u2019s parents convey that being loved depends on their being successful or that their parents\u2019 love will be withdrawn if they fail (this is rarely the message that parents send, but it is the one that children frequently receive). Children with Fear of failure perceive failure to be a ravenous beast that pursues them relentlessly and they only experience a small amount of relief when they succeed (and that feeling doesn\u2019t last long). As a result, avoiding failure becomes their singular motivation and goal in life.<\/p>\n

Despite this profound fear of failure, so many of the children I have worked with did nonetheless fail frequently and often monumentally, either by giving up easily or doing something that ensured failure, even when success was highly likely. I asked myself, why would children who fear failure so much actually do things that guaranteed failure.<\/p>\n

Total Failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

I came to see that most children don\u2019t have a fear of failure, but rather they had a fear of total<\/em> failure. I define total failure as \u201cgiving it their all and not achieving their goal.\u201d When I ask children if total failure is a good or bad thing, the response is unanimous and stark; it is the worst thing! So what is so bad about total failure? In a way, it\u2019s the end of the road toward that goal. If children give everything they have and don\u2019t achieve the goal, they have to admit that they simply weren\u2019t good enough and there\u2019s nothing more they can. This realization is, for most children, truly untenable. Better for children to fail with an excuse (called self-sabotage or self-defeating behavior) than experience total failure because it allows them to avoid the consequences of total failure and always leaves open the possibility of success in the future.<\/p>\n

Yet I would argue that total failure is a good (though not ideal) goal because, even though children may not reach their goal, they did everything they could to achieve it and no one can ask more of them than their best effort. To put this in perspective, I define total success as children giving it everything they have and achieving their goal. Total success and total failure have one thing in common: giving it everything they\u2019ve got. So the real goal for children is to experience \u201ctotal\u201d something, whether success or failure, because what more can they do. At the end of the day, will children be disappointed in not having achieved their goal? Of course, but there will also be indelible satisfaction at having given their best effort and fully realized their ability. Also, the simple reality is that if children don\u2019t give it everything they\u2019ve got, they will have little chance of ever reaching their goals or achieving total success.<\/p>\n

Risks<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most destructive aspects of fear of total failure is that children are afraid to take risks. By definition, the more risks that children take, the greater the likelihood of failure. Yet risk is essential for achieving total success. Risk means children getting out of their comfort zones, pushing themselves a bit beyond what they thought was possible, and, most basically, risking the possibility of failure. Without risk, there can be little growth or progress, children are perpetually stuck in one place, and they can never realize total success. Unfortunately, another paradox about fear of total failure is that the only way to be truly successful is to take risks. So, children with a fear of total failure play it safe and avoid failure\u2014that\u2019s a relief!\u2014but they also experience the frustration of unfulfilled promise and miss the exhilaration of having \u201cleft it all out on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardinal Rules<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two cardinal rules that I have tried to live my life by and teach my clients and my own children. Rule #1 is that I don\u2019t want any child to ask, at the end of a semester, season, year, career, or life, \u201cI wonder what could have been?\u201d That may be the saddest question anyone can pose to themselves because there are no \u201credos\u201d in life. Rule #2 is that the one emotion I don\u2019t want any child to experience is regret. Regret is defined as: \u201cto feel sorry or disappointed about something that one wishes could be different; a sense of loss or longing for something gone,\u201d in other words, \u201cDarn it, I wish I had tried harder.\u201d In the end, you want your children to make a statement: \u201cI gave it everything I had,\u201d and experience two emotions: pride and fulfillment in having given it their all.<\/p>\n

To achieve their life\u2019s goals, your children must embrace the following:\u201cTo achieve Total Success, I can accept Total Failure.\u201d<\/em> By doing so, they will have nothing to fear from failure and, as a result, are liberated to pursue success with unrestrained gusto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my very first Prime Family Alert! newsletter published in April of 2005, I discussed the sad epidemic of fear of failure that was rampant in America then.\u00a0 Well, almost four years later, fear of failure is still the most pervasive and debilitating issue among children I see in my practice and the thousands I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1525],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}