What is one piece of advice you would give someone who is afraid of failure? Share an experience where you learned from a setback.

I'm Jeanette Brown, a personal coach at Jeanettebrown.net and educator who helps people build "quietly durable" relationships at home and at work. My one piece of advice if you're afraid of failure: plan your repair before you start. Write down what you'll do if it flops—who you'll tell, what you'll change, and when you'll try again (within 24 hours). When your brain sees a next step, failure feels less like a verdict and more like feedback. I learned this launching my first workshop. I launched a "repair literacy" workshop in 2022 expecting twenty seats to go fast. Three people signed up. My stomach dropped, then I opened my repair plan. I called each person, turned it into a white-glove pilot, recorded their questions, and asked what almost kept them from buying. The answer wasn't my content—it was the framing and timing. I rewrote the page to lead with outcomes ("how to fight well without fallout"), moved it to a lunchtime slot, and set an early-bird cap at twelve. Two weeks later, eleven spots filled and the feedback sharpened the curriculum I still use today. The fear didn't disappear — it just had a map. Thanks for considering my thoughts for your piece! Jeanette

After coaching hundreds of executives and walking through my own business pivots over decades, I've learned that fear of failure is actually fear of the wrong kind of hard. Most people choose what I call "easy-hard"--avoiding the scary decision now but paying for it with regret later. I had a moment years ago during a live event when my keynote speaker got completely lost and was missing right before his talk. Instead of panicking about the "failure" of a ruined event, I chose "hard-easy"--jumped on stage unprepared and delivered an impromptu session myself. The room stayed electric, and when he finally arrived, the audience was perfectly primed. That experience taught me the framework I now teach: you don't get to avoid hard, you only get to choose which kind. The failure you're afraid of is usually just your brain's Reticular Activating System (RAS) filtering for danger instead of opportunity. My advice: write down the question looping in your head about that failure, then reframe it. Instead of "What if I fail?" ask "What would success require from me today?" Your brain will literally start noticing different possibilities once you change the filter.

The most important thing to address the fear of failure is to decouple failure and self-esteem. Attribution theory holds that people attribute failure either internally or externally, i.e. blame themselves or the external situation. For example, if you fail a test, you could accuse yourself of not being smart, or you could say that the test itself was too hard. Research shows that attributing failures internally erodes self-esteem, making people more risk-averse and afraid of failure. External attributions, however, do not impact self-esteem and instead protect motivation moving forward. Realistically, failure is almost always due to both internal and external factors, but you are well advised to focus on the external factors first, especially if your instinct is to blame immutable characteristics (intelligence, personality, physical characteristics, etc.). For example, whenever large deals with clients fall through, I step back and take stock of what happened. I remind myself that the majority of deals fail, and that's a more likely outcome than success. From there, I take an honest accounting of everything that went wrong and look to learn from the experience. I don't beat myself up or put myself down, and I certainly don't avoid trying again. Instead, I rationalise what happened, acknowledge that many factors led to the failure, and don't allow setbacks to erode my self-esteem, making failure seem less intimidating.

After 30+ years of pastoral leadership and building Grace Church from one campus to eight across three states, here's what I've learned: failure isn't your enemy--it's your teacher if you let it be. My biggest setback came early in my leadership when I tried to implement changes too quickly without properly preparing our congregation. We lost several key families and I questioned everything about my approach. Instead of retreating, I used that failure to develop what became our core leadership principle: "Go first." I realized I had to model vulnerability and admit my mistakes before asking others to trust me with change. That painful season taught me the power of "practicing self-leadership"--you can't lead others until you can honestly lead yourself through failure. Now when our staff faces setbacks, we don't hide from them. We examine what went wrong, own our part, and use that knowledge to build something stronger. The church members who stayed through that difficult period became our strongest advocates because they saw authentic leadership in action. Sometimes your greatest ministry comes not from your successes, but from how you handle your failures in front of others.

Fear of failure becomes less scary once you see it as practice instead of a final assessment of your abilities. Early on, on the Inca Trail, I found the strength of the senior porters beyond my abilities. Some days I carried 15 kg while they carried 25 kg, but I always arrived at camp completely wiped and embarrassed. In those moments of failure, I could have easily decided to quit. Instead, I watched the old porters pack their loads, match their footsteps, and leverage energy savings for the climb. Eventually, I was able to carry the same weight as the seasoned porters and still arrive energetic enough to assist others and that changed the way I viewed failure. Years later, that early difficulty became the foundation for facilitating groups on the way to Everest Base Camp and Kilimanjaro, where the journey can include greater than 60 km of steep elevation gain at high altitude. Even though I'm carrying more than on the Inca Trail and am more fatigued, I was still able to mentally push through, where failure is not a conclusion, it is a training ground that makes one's endurance and resilience ready for greater challenges.

Having run cafes for 20+ years and launched The Nines nearly a decade ago, I've learned that failure isn't the enemy--indecision is. When we opened, I was terrified we'd picked the wrong location or that Maroochydore wasn't ready for our Melbourne-inspired vibe. Our biggest setback hit around year three when we tried expanding our dinner service. We invested heavily in new equipment and evening staff, but it flopped spectacularly--we were barely covering costs after 6pm. Instead of panicking, I pulled the plug within six weeks and redirected that energy into perfecting our all-day breakfast and lunch game. That "failure" actually saved us thousands and taught me to trust our core strengths. We doubled down on what worked--our Bacon Benny became non-negotiable, we perfected our coffee with Tim Adams' Vintage Black blend, and focused on being the best daytime spot on the Coast. My advice: set a failure deadline before you start anything new. Give yourself permission to quit fast if something isn't working, then pour that saved energy into what's already bringing you joy and profit. Our monthly specials program came from this mindset--small experiments that either stick or disappear within 30 days.

I am a person who has built a translation business from zero revenue to seven figures and what I tell every entrepreneur gripped by perfection is that winners ship good work on time while perfectionists polish themselves out of business. Fear of failure is the biggest killer of companies. I learned this lesson when my perfectionism cost me a contract of $45,000 from a German automotive company. While I was spending three weeks agonizing over a single technical term in a 50,000-word document, my competitor delivered their version with 99.8% accuracy and won the deal. My obsession with an extra 0.17% accuracy cost me the quarter's revenue. That failure was my moment of breakthrough. I have a two hour rule, if there is a terminology argument it's brought up to the client immediately. This one adjustment increased project completion rate from 87% to 98% and reduced delivery times by four days. My teams' projects are now completed 15% faster because they know the limits of perfectionism. I lost one German client that came back to me two years later because the other agencies couldn't keep up with us in terms of speed. Sometimes your greatest weakness turns out to be your greatest strength.

Failures are a part of growth. You learn from the things dragging you down and grow flawlessly. Getting up from a setback is never easy, but it makes you stronger emotionally. The only way to achieve something is to make it happen. Despite your best efforts, sometimes, some things don't just work. Going back to those things and identifying spots where you missed it is all you need. Recently, I have been working on locking a deal, but despite my best efforts, the deal was off. It was devastating at first, but then, after a little breakdown and some arguments with myself, I started revisiting every checkpoint, relooking where I missed or what went south. At first, it was overwhelming. But slowly it started sinking. A few nights into every recalculation, every negotiation, and deep diving into every detail, I found the glitches. There was a calculation not taken into account, which would have made an incredible negotiation, and we missed it. Of course, as per everyone's opinion, it was a lost case, but willingness never fails you. I replanned everything and mentioned it all again, redrafting the points. I shared it with the client, anyway. They couldn't give us that project, but we got a reference for future retainership, and the revenue for the same was way more than the one we missed.

To anyone who is afraid of failures, I'd say it's like a tuition bill to school: you're paying the price for learning something that you can't otherwise learn. I over-punted one event in Angel City Limo, where we had way more cars than drivers at the very beginning. It was insane, and I stayed up half the night doing breakthroughs to fill in holes. The setback caused me to re-imagine how we scheduled, staffed, and engineered our backup systems. We discarded vendor relationships and planning processes that had allowed us to begin thinking even bigger long-term. In hindsight, I came to recognize that the struggle taught me more about scaling than any success ever could have.

I am a person, who makes server catastrophes his tournament win. The fear of failure will end your career as a host even before it starts. The best moment of my life was when we went to a Counter-Strike tournament with 64 teams and a prize fund of 5,000 dollars and our main server experienced a 30 percent packet loss in the semifinals. The majority of admins would reset the whole bracket and ruin six hours of player progress. I selected the risky alternative of using live-migrating 128 active connections in the process of backing up hardware as matches proceeded. My team called me crazy. It took 47 seconds of sheer horror before we could get the migration over, but we won the tournament and saved 5000 dollars in prizes. The lesson of that move was that nothing can teach me to be an actual server like being thrown into the fire and mastering it, and no manuals would ever teach me to be a great server, when I am sitting at my computer studying guides. Today I practice stress scenarios every month where I mimic the total failure of the entire system due to the difference between amateur and professional hosting is how you respond to a situation where everything in the world is going down around you.

Based on my experience as an executive recruiter, unexpected challenges can arise at any moment when working to fill a role on behalf of an employer. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn. Perfection is impossible, so focus on the present and give it your all. In the words of Roger Federer, "[W]hen it's behind you, it's behind you... This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point... and the next one after that... with intensity, clarity and focus."

You've probably heard the saying that failure is the greatest teacher, and there's definitely some truth to it. One of the most important things that failure can teach you is what you're not cut out for. I'm someone whose interests run in a lot of directions. It's one of the reasons that entrepreneurship is such a good fit for me. I have skills that can help me in any industry. There are some industries I'm really not cut out for, though. I've tried and failed to launch restaurants, delivery services, and 3d printing farms, and all of those failures helped me to zero in on what I'm best at.

At times, failure can be difficult, but it also can be one of the most impactful elements of development. In addition, I have come to discover that the fear of failure typically detracts from your development more than failure itself. Once you enter into the challenge, expect not to have success, you stop seeing it as evidence of your incompetence, and instead start seeing it as the lesson to make you sharper. What I still have in mind is the power this situation brings. It isn't simply that you gained something, you get strength, insight and the sanity of what's really important. You can't quit the failure until you have given it a shot and don't get the evidence that you have made it. The individuals that are successful are not individuals who have not failed, they are the individuals who kept going, increase their tactics and keep coming back stronger.

Fear of failure is one of the most common barriers I see in career coaching. It holds people back from applying for new roles, asking for promotions, or even exploring a different path. My advice? Redefine failure as feedback. Every setback is a data point, not a dead end. When you shift from fearing failure to treating it as information, you stop seeing mistakes as proof you're not capable and start seeing them as stepping stones. In business and in life, progress rarely comes from a perfect first attempt—it comes from experimenting, learning, and adjusting. When I first launched my coaching business, I invested heavily in a group program I thought would resonate with mid-career professionals. I marketed it, ran ads, and built materials—only to have three people sign up. At first, I felt embarrassed and questioned whether I should even be in business. But after analyzing the outcome, I realized my audience preferred 1:1 guidance at that stage of their journey. I restructured my services, and within months, demand for private coaching exceeded my availability. That "failure" was the turning point that shaped my most successful offering. A Harvard Business Review analysis found that companies embracing a "fail fast, learn faster" culture innovate at a rate 3x higher than competitors. Similarly, psychology research shows that reframing failure as a learning experience reduces stress and builds resilience. The science backs up what I've seen firsthand: resilience isn't about avoiding failure—it's about how you respond. The lesson is simple: don't fear failure—mine it for insights. Setbacks aren't signs you're unworthy; they're signals pointing you toward a better path. For me, a failed program launch revealed what my clients truly needed. For others, a rejection letter or missed opportunity may unlock a clearer direction. Failure, reframed, becomes the raw material of success.

My advice is to treat failure as data collection. The word "failure" is a judgment; it's heavy and final. The word "data" is neutral. It's just information that tells you what to do next. If you see a setback not as a verdict on your worth but as an experiment that produced a useful result, the fear loses its power. An experiment can't fail—it can only produce an outcome. That outcome is data. This reframe moves you from a place of shame to a place of curiosity. I learned this when building my practice's online presence. My goal was to create a resource where people, both locally in Orlando and beyond, could find answers to the tough mental health questions they were afraid to ask. I spent countless hours putting myself in their shoes, writing empathetic answers to what I imagined they would want to know. When I first started publishing, the response was minimal. It felt like shouting into the void. My initial thought was that this approach wasn't working at all. But instead of seeing it as a failure, I looked at the data. The data showed that a few very specific, deeply personal posts were getting a tiny bit of traction, while the more general ones disappeared completely. I realized the "failure" was actually a signal: people were responding to vulnerability and directness, not broad educational content. I doubled down on that insight, focusing only on answering the most difficult questions in the most human way possible. That's when the connection with the community truly began to build. The initial lack of engagement wasn't a failure—it was the data that pointed me toward a more authentic and effective way to connect with people.

My biggest setback came in 2007, two years after opening Rudy's Smokehouse. I was so focused on perfecting our recipes that I completely burned through our opening capital without building a steady customer base. We were three weeks from closing our doors permanently. Instead of panicking, I did something that felt backwards--I started giving away half our Tuesday earnings to local Springfield charities. Everyone told me I was crazy to give away money we desperately needed. But that decision forced us to focus on what really mattered: serving our community, not just serving food. That "Charity Tuesday" program transformed everything. Word spread about this crazy veteran who was giving away his profits, and people started coming in specifically on Tuesdays to support both us and the local causes. Our Tuesday sales tripled within six months, and those customers became our most loyal regulars. My advice: when you're afraid of failure, lean into service instead of self-preservation. The moment I stopped asking "How do I save my business?" and started asking "How do I serve my community?" everything changed. Sometimes your biggest breakthrough comes disguised as your most reckless decision.

After 20+ years running Patriot Excavating and Grounded Solutions, I've learned that failure isn't your enemy--avoiding risk is. The biggest setback in my career happened when we took on a massive commercial electrical project in 2018 without properly calculating our crew capacity. We ended up 3 weeks behind schedule and had to bring in subcontractors at our own expense, which nearly killed our profit margin. That disaster forced me to completely overhaul how we assess project timelines and resource allocation. Now we use load calculations for our workforce just like we do for electrical panels--if you're pushing 80% capacity, you're headed for trouble. We implemented a rule that we never book projects beyond 70% of our team's proven capacity, with mandatory buffer time built into every timeline. The electrical panel upgrades we do now follow the same principle I learned from that failure. When homeowners push old systems to 100% capacity, they get flickering lights and tripped breakers. Smart planning means staying well below your limits so you can handle unexpected surges. The contractors who caused me the most headaches on that failed project? Three of them now regularly subcontract for us because they saw how we handled the crisis professionally. Sometimes your worst failure becomes your best networking opportunity.

When someone's paralyzed by fear of failure, I tell them to start with something small where failure won't destroy them. That's exactly what I did when we launched our insurance blog in 2021 - I had zero experience with content marketing and was terrified of looking incompetent online. The blog completely bombed for the first six months. Our "How to Prevent Barn Fires" article got maybe 15 views, and I was convinced we'd wasted money on the website redesign. But I kept publishing weekly because the financial risk was manageable - just my time and some hosting costs. That persistence paid off when severe weather hit our area hard. Suddenly everyone needed information about homeowner's coverage for storm damage, and our blog became a trusted resource. We went from 15 views to hundreds of quote requests because we'd already built credibility through consistent, helpful content. My advice: pick a failure you can afford and commit to learning from it for at least six months. Don't judge results in week one when you're still figuring out the basics. Some of our biggest insurance wins came from clients who initially rejected our quotes but remembered our helpful approach when they needed us most.

After 30+ years in orthopedic surgery, I've learned that failure isn't the enemy--perfectionism is. Early in my career, I had a patient with a complex ACL reconstruction who didn't respond to my initial surgical approach the way I expected. Instead of acknowledging the setback, I kept pushing the same treatment plan, which delayed their recovery by months. That experience taught me to pivot quickly when something isn't working. Now at the Center for Specialty Care, we track our patient satisfaction religiously--we maintain 100% satisfaction because we've learned to adjust our approach immediately when patients aren't progressing as expected. Whether it's switching from surgical to non-surgical treatment or modifying our physical therapy protocols, flexibility beats stubbornness every time. My advice: accept the data from your failures faster than your ego wants to. When I finally started listening to that patient's feedback and completely redesigned their rehab program, they recovered fully and became one of our biggest referral sources. Fear of failure keeps you from collecting the information you need to succeed--but failure itself is just expensive market research if you're paying attention.

I've built EveryBody eBikes from nearly losing everything in the 2022 Brisbane floods to becoming Australia's largest supplier of adaptive eBikes. My advice: accept the pivot, because your "failure" is often just feedback that you're solving the wrong problem. We started focused purely on sustainable transport and eco-friendly commuting. After months of lukewarm sales, I realized we were missing the mark when customers kept sharing stories about not riding for decades due to age, disability, or lost confidence. Instead of doubling down on our original plan, we completely shifted to adaptive mobility. That pivot led us to design the Lightning--the world's only eBike for people with dwarfism--and our Trident semi-recumbent trike became our best-seller. Over 70% of our customers are now women, many who thought they'd never ride again. When you hit a wall, listen to what your customers are actually telling you, not what you think they should want. Sometimes your biggest breakthrough is hiding in plain sight, disguised as the thing that's "not working" about your current approach.