Understanding Reality Beyond Words and Reductionism

Fear Of Failure

What is fear of failure..!! What is fear? Umm.. Fear is a feeling 🤔 an unpleasant emotion🧐 or something like that😅 okay now what is Failure?

Hmm.. so failure is being unable to get the result which you want. Failure is when you like to draw art and you went in an art competition and you were expecting to get the first prize but you couldn't even get the 3rd prize. So this is something which your mind would perceive it as a failure. In our daily lives, we have lots of moments where we experience this failure in one way or the other.

You might be aware of the fact that our mind works on the principle of pain and pleasure i.e. it tries to avoid any kind of pain and it tries to seek any kind of pleasure. Since having a feeling of being failed is painful, disappointing and sometimes heartbreaking. So our mind  develops a habit of avoiding such feeling by completely avoiding any task where we have the chances of being failed. And this is called fear of failure

For example, you were planning to doing something new or thinking of working on a really smart project but at the same time you are unsure if it would succeed or not and you have this feeling in the back of your mind that "what if people don't like it what if I don't get appreciation what if people ignore it what if it doesn't work out", etc. And because of this fear you're unnecessarily putting your work on delay until you see another person doing the exact thing which you once thought of doing. So what's the real solution of this fear of failure 🤔 How can we force our mind to change this habit of keep delaying our work. So after spending some precious evening I finally brought the solution for you 😅So let's see what's it is.

Part 1

Actually, it's not the fear of failure rather it's the fear of feeling unpleasant and painful of being failed. So now we'll try to learn deeply about what failure means. The notion of failure in the mind only comes when we compare something to something else. Or it comes when we already expect certain things from our work. For example, if you're participating in a writing contest then you have this fear that what will happen if you get fail. Because in a contest your work would be supposed to compare with other writings. Similarly if you're writing a post whose primary goal is to convince people and influence them and attract a large crowd or getting attention then you'll also have this fear that what if people don't like it, what if they don't appreciate your work. So this is a common type of fear which you have and because of that you keep procastinating your work.

So the ultimate way to deal with this fear of failure is to modify your intention of doing a particular work. Stop comparing it when you stop comparing it then the notion of failure will remove.


What it means to modify intention. Okay it means that doing something by being independent of external factors. It means doing something for the sake of yourself is helpful in removing this fear of failure.

For example someone write blogs because he likes and enjoys writing it. He writes because he likes to express his beliefs and opinions in words. So when he writes with this intention then the fear of being failed is reduced because now his chief concern is not the people's appreciation or condemnation. Although it's the secondary goal to share opinions to a large crowds so that it might be helpful to someone somewhere. But he considers his efforts of writing is a success in itself.  Since he wanted to do something And he finally did it. So it gives him the feeling of success and the fear of failure get already removed because he made his writing independent of people's likes or dislikes. However it's important to have the feedback of people but receiving the feedbacks is the secondary purpose.

Have you ever experienced fear of failure in doing a work in which you don't have to show it to anyone? The answer would be "No". Because you can't fail in something which is unique in itself, for example this writing of mine is unique in itself 😅 so i cannot be failed in it. It's my blog, I'll write it the way I want with poor grammar, self made examples, and unsynthesized paragraphs. Yet i cannot fail in it because it's distinct than a standard blog writing. We can only have a fear of failure when we keep try to fit in the standard defined sets. But what if I keep myself independent from those standards? There's a huge topic of "Ultimate reality and socially constructed reality" I will write about it on some other day.

When you do something only for the sake of yourself, this fear of failure is removed because then you don't calculate about the influencing capacity of the work. You just do your work because you believe in the effectiveness and value of your project.

As said by Susan cain, "Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives us the incalculable power to go your own way" which I interpret as when you don't care of the rewards or people's appreciation then you become entirely free to do what you really love. 

Part 2

But doing something without expecting anything in result is a tough job. It's the fact that we humans are an appreciation seeking creatures.

As said by the famous psychologist William James, "Craving for appreciation is the deepest principle in human nature".

More or less we all have a desire to be appreciated, to be listened, to be valued and to be loved. We wish that our work should be taken into consideration. So now how do we set out this struggle.

This life is too short. It's given by Allah, and we have a very limited amount of time. So if you think you can make this world a better place even in tiniest way then don't wait too long to pursue your goal. Taking the first step in the path of righteousness and believing in your project is itself a success because you're taking it for the sake of Allah. Here I'd like to mention a hadeeth which says like.

Narrated 'Umar bin Al-Khattab:

I heard Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) saying, "The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended. So whoever emigrated for worldly benefits or for a woman to marry, his emigration was for what he emigrated for."


So even if you're not 100% sure that your project is definitely going to change the world but atleast you have an idea then start working on it, expecting the reward only from Allah. And who is better in appreciating your work and rewarding you than Allah. So when you'll do this then the people's attraction, people's praises would only be a means of encouragement and people's avoidance would not be a cause of disappointment and you'll be successfully able to remove the fear of failure.


So now you've known that our fear of failure is related to people. But people is a broad term, we cannot generalise people. There are tremendously different types of people. Even if your work didn't get attention that doesn't means people don't like it. It means that only those people who've seen it might not interested in your work. And what do you think how much have seen it? Obviously a very small portion of the population. There are much chances that there must be lots of people who are really going to love your work. And everytime when someone would love it, when someone would learn from it, everytime you'll get a reward even if you have left this world a long time ago.


Apart from helping me hope this would also help you. 🙂So don't forget to give your feedback whether on blog or on WhatsApp and share if you liked it. 🙃