In my last post, Fear of Failure: Part I, I discussed the sad epidemic of fear of failure that I found to be rampant in America and that I see frequently in the young athletes with whom I work. I have discovered a new wrinkle to the fear-of-failure phenomenon that brings greater clarity to the problems that young athletes face in our increasingly intense, result-oriented sports world.

Let me begin by describing what I believe lies at the heart of fear of failure: every bad performance is perceived by athletes as an attack on their value as a person. This statement is powerful and truly harmful. Moreover, this perception is entirely disconnected from reality; it’s simply not true. Whether you succeed or fail in no way is a reflection on your fundamental value as people.

In essence, athletes with a fear of failure see failure as a mountain lion that, if it catches them, it will eat them. Given this perception of failure, it’s not surprising that athletes would do everything they can to stay as far away from that mountain lion as possible. But here’s a brief hint before we sink our teeth into this topic (pun intended): failure is a kitty cat, not a mountain lion. Yes, a kitty cat can hurt you; it can scratch you and bite you. But, and here’s the big point, it won’t kill you.

As I explored fear of failure in the athletes I work with, I was struck by an odd paradox. These athletes have a fear of failure, yet they end up doing things that actually cause themselves to fail by doing something that ensures failure (e.g., have a pessimistic attitude, don’t prepare well, or give up without a fight), even when success is within their reach. I was stumped by this conflict: Why would athletes who fear failure so much actually do things that guarantee failure?

As I noted in my last post, the failure I just described, which is a form of self-sabotage, safeguards athletes from having to admit that they really failed by providing an excuse for their failure. That excuse allows them to avoid taking responsibility for the failure, thus protecting them from feeling like a failure and feeling worthless.

One big problem with this strategy is that they still fail. And there is no “excuse” line on the result sheet!

Total Failure

This realization led me to the conclusion that young athletes don’t have a fear of failure, but rather they have a fear of total failure. I define total failure as “giving it your all and not achieving your goals.” When I ask young athletes if total failure is a good or bad thing, the response is unanimous and emphatic; it is the worst thing! So what is so bad about total failure? If athletes give everything they have and don’t achieve their goals, they have to admit that they simply aren’t good enough and there’s nothing more they can do. And that realization is very difficult for a young athlete with big goals to accept. Better for young athletes to fail with an excuse than experience total failure because it allows them to avoid the consequences of total failure (e.g., disappointment of others, wasted time, shame) and always leaves open the possibility of success in the future.

Yet I would argue that total failure is a good (though not ideal) thing because, even though young athletes may not reach their goal, they did everything they could to achieve it and, ultimately, that’s all they can do. To put this in perspective, I define total success as athletes giving it everything they have and achieving their goal. Is total success a good thing? It is a great thing! But total success and total failure have one thing in common: giving it everything they’ve got. So the real goal for athletes is to experience “total” something, whether success or failure, because, in either case, they gave it their all and  what more can they do. At the end of the day, will young athletes be disappointed in not having achieved their goals? Of course. But there will also be indelible satisfaction at having given their best effort and performed as well as they possibly could have. Also, the simple reality is that if athletes don’t give it everything they’ve got, they will have no chance of ever reaching their goals or achieving total success. If they do give it their all, there is a pretty good chance that something good will happen.

Risks

One of the most self-defeating aspects of the fear of total failure is that young athletes are unwilling to take risks on course. By definition, the greater and the more risks that athletes take, the greater the likelihood of failure. Yet, without risk, total success can never be achieved. Because athletes with a fear of total failure are more concerned with avoiding failure than achieving success, they focus on the downsides of risk and, as a result, hold themselves back and perform cautiously and safely rather than taking the risks necessary for success. In doing so, they, sadly, experience the frustration of unfulfilled promise and miss the exhilaration of having performed the best they possibly could have.

Cardinal Rules

There are two cardinal rules that I believe all athletes (and all people) should live by. Rule #1 is that I don’t want anyone to ask, at the end of a race, race season, career, or life, “I wonder what could have been?” That may be the saddest question anyone can pose to themselves because there are no “redos” in life. You want to look back and, win or lose, finish or crash, be able to say, “I left it all out on the hill.”

Rule #2 is that the one emotion I don’t want any athlete (in fact, any person) to experience is regret. Regret is defined as: “to feel sorry or disappointed about something that one wishes could be different; a sense of loss or longing for something gone,” in other words, “Darn it, I wish I had gone for it!” In the end, I want athletes to make the statement: “I gave it everything I had,” and experience two emotions: pride and fulfillment in having given it their all.

In sum, to achieve your athletic (and life) goals, you must embrace the following: “To achieve Total Success, I must be willing to accept Total Failure.” By doing so, you will have nothing to fear from failure and, as a result, will be liberated to pursue total success with unrestrained gusto.

Look for Part III of my Fear of Failure series next week.