Why a healthy dose of Fear can be a Good Thing

“In order to be successful, you must not be afraid of failure.” 

This is definitely one of the more frequently quoted phrases about success. And right so. If just the thought of failure brings you anxiety, you'll become a very passive, unambitious and indecisive person, paralyzed in face of decisions. You won't ever take any risks that may reward you or fulfill you. Daring to risk, daring to take action in spite of what the outcome may be is what sets most successful people apart after all.

That being said, the point I want to make with this post is that the other side of the coin is rarely talked about, if at all, although it is equally important. 

A complete lack of fear of failure can be just as devastating to your hopes and dreams. 

If you are too comfortable with not accomplishing your goals, and accepting it as “well this is how it's supposed to be, I guess”, then that's just as damaging to your chances of success than being completely terrified of failure.

I think I can explain this better by using an analogy (bear with me here). Let’s suppose you are practicing to jump across a fairly wide ledge. If you'd fall, the distance from where you are to the ground would definitely kill you. So for safety, you have ropes attached to you that’ll catch you every time you don’t make it to the other side. Now you are a very persistent person and you aren’t afraid of failing at all, so you try relentlessly but you never actually make it to the other side since it’s just a tad bit too wide. So, how on earth would you be able to finally make that jump?

Cut the rope.

By losing the rope, you suddenly become pretty afraid of failing, as that would most likely kill you. So guess what? The extra adrenalin & cortisol hormones pumped into your blood stream gives you that extra power to complete the jump and hold on to the other ledge with your bare fingers. You have to realize that only when there is something at stake, like your own life, that’s when you will perform you’re absolute best.

Obviously, this is a very extreme example but I hope you get the idea. If you’re not afraid of failing (often so because it doesn’t cost you anything to fail) you risk becoming comfortable with what you are doing. You risk just enjoying each and every new jump too much knowing that the rope will catch you safely anyway.

To put this in more relevant terms, it’s like someone trying to build a new e-commerce website every time after his last failed attempt without re-thinking or re-strategizing anything because he simply enjoys building and designing those kind of websites.

If you think about it, the high possibility of failure is what really makes success something that people strive for and want. Success is a hard thing to achieve because so many people fail at achieving it. A small, healthy dose of fear of failure is what will keep us on our toes. Whether its starting a business, going through school or life in general; sometimes, only when the cost of failing is high - when failure is not an option - we will truly perform our best and thus finally reach our goals.

"Don't be afraid of failure, but be afraid of being comfortable with failure."