How to beat your fear of rejection and embrace failures

In his book Fueled by Failure, entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeremy Bloom shows readers how rebound and reprogram themselves after defeat and how to use the lessons from those failures to achieve winning results. In this edited excerpt, the author explains why acknowledging and accepting your failures can make you a stronger and more successful business owner.

Webster’s dictionary defines failure as “the nonperformance of an assigned or expected action” or “a falling short of one’s goals.” I consider the first definition to apply to the short-term failures we all experience often when trying to do something, such as missing a sales quota for the quarter. The second definition, however, has far greater impact on us since our goals can be very closely tied to who we are as individuals.

But the definition of failure varies greatly among people—it’s a very personal thing, and each person defines their own idea of success and failure.

Whatever that definition is for you, when you lose, you’ll need time and space to put it into proper perspective.

And there are actually plenty of ways to fail. According to management, strategy, and leadership professor Sydney Finkelstein of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, while there may be only a limited number of ways in which to succeed, there are many ways to fail. “Having a bad idea, not executing well, not having the courage to change or adapt, not building the right team, or making bad decisions are among so many possible ways in which we can fail,” Finkelstein says. Another way of failing: not even trying.

There are even more typical, tangible ways that we fail that are defined by the world around us. “The consequences of failure in a company are big. You can lose your [livelihood], for one,” Finkelstein explains. But a lot of things in life are hard—they might even seem insurmountable, especially if you’ve already experienced a setback or failure. “Many people become scared of failure and not only do not want to embrace it but often stop putting themselves out there,” says Finkelstein. “Since we all have a desire to feel good about ourselves, when we fail at something and don’t feel good about ourselves, we become less confident and may fail to try new things or take bigger risks.”

The bottom line: Failure builds. Failure can lead to more failure. That is, unless you learn to use each failure to your advantage, to let it fuel your future success.

The traditional thinking is, the more time and money that was invested to start a company, the longer it can take an entrepreneur to assess what went wrong and process the failure. And while that’s been true in many cases and many entrepreneurs take a much-needed break to refuel before getting back in the game, others are able to rebound more quickly. At some point, however, you need to put your failure aside and get back in the game.

Admitting Failure

Being able to admit you failed at something is a liberating experience. Yet one of the hardest things to say is “I failed.” But by admitting it, you’ve literally set yourself free of the weight of it.

The real reason admitting failure is so hard? It makes us feel vulnerable. Saying “I failed” means dropping your guard and opening yourself up to criticism or self-deprecation. It also may mean giving up on a goal or a dream because you feel like you’ve let down your family, friends, colleagues, or fans.

If admitting failure makes you uncomfortable, actually embracing it can be nearly impossible. We learn from an early age that failure is bad, so why would we want to embrace it?

First, it’s important to understand that you can embrace failure in a negative or a positive way. There are many people who see embracing failure as negative or a sign of weakness. They’ll try to keep their failures hidden like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. They believe that by embracing failure, they’re giving up, giving in, or setting up much lower standards.

Defining yourself as a failure is another negative way of embracing it. It’s an excuse to say, “I can’t do it,” “I give up,” or “Why bother? I won’t succeed anyway.” What people who see failure this way don’t recognize is that sometimes you need to go back to the base of the mountain to start climbing again.

Embracing failure positively requires a leap of faith, but once you jump over the hurdle, you’ll understand that fearing failure only holds you back from realizing your full potential. Eric Roza, CEO of Datalogix, says that at his company, the corporate culture practically encourages people to acknowledge their failures or errors at monthly company meetings via a “Stay Humble, Keep Improving” moment.

“By acknowledging it as a group, we can all fail and that’s OK,” Roza says. By recognizing that everyone fails, the people at Datalogix are able to embrace it as a regular part of life. Since most of what we learn is from trial and error, beginning when we fall down again and again trying to walk, it’s only natural to recognize that everyone fails . and often.

Here are five ways embracing failure can work for you:

1. We learn some of our best lessons through failure.

2. Failure inspires us. If we look at it properly and don’t allow it to define us, failure can be a great source of motivation.

3. Failure teaches us humility. We feel humble after losing and recognize that we are indeed human.

4. Embracing failure allows us to take more risks. Once we come to terms with having failed and survived, we can take greater risks.

5. Failure makes success taste even better. We have a better appreciation of success having failed a few times on the way up the ladder.

“Once you’ve embraced failure, you no longer fear it,” Roza says.

Finkelstein sums it up pretty simply: “That’s the point of embracing failure in a positive way . it allows you to move past the negatives and the disappointments and change your mindset from ‘failure is bad’ to ‘failure can be good and here’s how to make it a tool for you.’ ”

If you don’t constructively embrace failure in a healthy way, you’ll get stuck and won’t allow yourself to accomplish what you could. And that would be the worst outcome of all.

Failure isn’t holding you back: fear of failure is. We’re conditioned to fear failure, as if lack of failure guarantees success. The reality is that lack of failure equals lack of risk-taking, which is required for meaningful success. Here are five actions you can take to shake off the doubt and fail like a pro.

1) Embrace your mistakes. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck identified a certain way of thinking shared by people who embrace their mistakes in the pursuit of success: the growth mindset is resilient in the face of failure and sees it as necessary for learning and achievement. If you immediately berate yourself for a mistake, you’re probably stuck in a fixed mindset. Dweck’s website offers some powerful insights into changing your mindset, but the bottom line is this: to change your mind about failure, all you have to do is… change your mind. Stop beating yourself up. Successful people don’t see failure as catastrophic, they see it as a good data point to guide their next attempts.

I’ve been practicing this for a few months now, and it really does take the sting out of failure. I’ve changed my internal dialogue from a sarcastic rejoinder to myself – “Way to go, Einstein!” – to a mindset of objective inquiry: “Huh, that was interesting….” This helps me separate my outcomes from my self-worth, and gives me room to creatively explore new options for reaching my goals. Try this, it really does work!

2) Stop trying so hard. Author and researcher (and self-professed “change geek”) Susan Alexander tells a story about being on a biking tour of the French countryside, when she seemed to hit a physical wall on what should have been a fairly easy hill. She struggled to make the climb, wondering if fatigue, mechanical problems or the altitude were making her discouraged and exhausted. With quite a distance left still to climb, she was enduring what should have been an enjoyable ride. Then a man in her party rode up from behind her and told her she was in the wrong gear: she was pushing too hard and making too little progress. Alexander’s lesson: “A quick fix is right there in front of us (hello, Occam’s Razor!), but we miss it. It’s either too obvious, or we forge straightaway into over-functioning or over-analyzing, forgetting that simplicity is often a formidable match for complexity.”

Physician and author Lissa Rankin talks about how to relax into success by being more “eggy” rather than “spermy” at the right times – stop chasing and start receiving. You may find a new ease that clears your mind, refreshes your energy and refocuses you on more purposeful, productive pursuits.

3) Ask for help. We’re afraid of looking less than competent when we ask for help, as if we’ve failed because we don’t know absolutely everything there is to know about everything. Here’s the secret you already understand about yourself, but forget about others: when someone asks for your help, they make you feel appreciated and therefore, you are eager to help them. Now, I’m not talking about the purposeful helplessness that manipulators use to get others to do their work or thinking for them. I’m talking about sincere, meaningful engagement with someone whose knowledge or assistance you value. Remember how you felt the last time someone said to you, “Hey, I’d really appreciate your help on this.” It felt good, right? The asker got what they wanted, and you felt valued. Make someone else feel good about helping you, and in the process advance toward your goal. I love this fable by an anonymous author:

A man was trying very hard to lift a large rock.

His friend approached and asked him, “Are you using all of your strength?”

“Yes, I’m trying my hardest,” the man said.

“Are you sure?” the friend pressed him.

“Of course I’m using all of my strength!” the man replied impatiently.

“No, you’re not,” said the friend. “I’m standing right here and you haven’t asked me for help.”

4) Say no when you’re afraid to. Get out of the habit of assuming that when someone important asks you for something, your reply should automatically be yes. When your manager piles yet another deliverable on your stack, or your best friend asks you to babysit on an exhausting week night, or your daughter asks you to stop planting flowers to go buy her science fair supplies, you do a quick calculation of the consequences of “No.” Often we say yes to avoid conflict, but think for a minute how you’re training these people to view your valuable time: it’s at their command, their needs are more important than yours, and you’re not capable of negotiating things that are important to you.

An easy yes is a cheap yes. Make them work for it. You must teach others how to respect your time and energy. Author and marketing guru Seth Godin posits a very powerful reason to say no. “The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often… You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.”

5) Say yes when you’re afraid to. A friend of mine is making the leap from a stable, predictable (read: wretchedly unchallenging) corporate job with benefits into the shark tank of entrepreneurship and individual health coverage. She spent many months unhappy in her job, but was afraid of flying solo for all of the obvious reasons: unpredictable income, no built-in infrastructure, uncertain chances of success, a hangnail turning into an amputation because she couldn’t afford the medical bills. She clearly was afraid to say yes to herself, to the opportunity, to the friends and colleagues who believed in her, because yes meant uncertainty – but also the possibility of enormous growth and success and lots of people watching her and asking things of her because she was successful. Saying yes can be scarier than saying no.

Finally, she experienced a moment of clarity when she focused on all of the great things that could happen, and gave them more power than all of the bad things that might happen. She already had the rest of us at yes, she just needed to hear it from herself – even though she was afraid. Now, she has colleagues coming out of the woodwork offering support, contacts, good wishes… and asking her for jobs.

Saying no sometimes close doors, but saying yes always opens them. Especially when you’re afraid.