Hi! I’m Laure, a passionate tutor with 2700+ hours of experience helping students navigate through their learning journey.
Over the last 7 years, I’ve seen how students of all ages can be afraid of failing.
And when they are, my priority is to encourage them to expose themselves to the risk of failing. As counterintuitive as it may feel.
Why? Because…
It will help you later.
Failing is not that big of a deal.
But you only realized that after you failed.
Before failing, we all tend to exaggerate the consequences such a failure would have on our lives. We tend to see them as much more dramatic than what they would actually be.
To all my students, when I see they are afraid of failing a test, I invite them to evaluate together the potential consequences of a failed test.
Here is how the conversation went with one of my students:
- What will happen if you fail your test?
- I will have a bad grade
- Ok, and then what will happen?
- I will have to repeat the year
- Well not for one failed test, but for many of them, maybe. But even so, then what?
- Then I will have bad grades for the rest of my life
- Probably not, actually, but let’s suppose you’re right. Then what?
- Then I will have a job that doesn’t pay well.
- Still, not necessarily, but let’s keep going. Then what?
- Then I won’t be able to travel the world with my children and they won’t be happy.
- Do you travel a lot with your parents?
- Yes.
- Are travels the only happy moments you spend with your family?
- No.
- What are your favorite moments with your family?
- When mom and dad have some free time in the weekend and we go for a walk all together and play games.
- Do your parents spend a lot of money on these weekends?
- Well… I don't think so.
- See?’
The sooner you fail, the sooner you realize that the consequences of failing are actually not as bad as you think. Even better: you learn more through your mistakes (which encourage you to reevaluate what you could have done better) than through your successes (which you don’t always know the actual reason of).
People who never failed are not successful.
Sounds counterintuitive? Let me explain.
People who never failed end up being afraid of failure.
They built a whole part of their identity around never failing. Usually redefined as being ‘successful’, ‘intelligent’, ‘smart’, you name it.
The more you defined your identity around that kind of concept, the harder it will be to expose yourself to the risk of failure. Because then, failing would question a whole part of who you (think you) are.
People who never failed do not dare get out of their comfort zone. But if you never take risks, are you ever actually succeeding?
Failure? Freedom!
People who failed, on the other hand, know failing is actually not that big of a deal.
So they just end up trying whatever they want.
People who never failed build what psychiatrist Christophe André defined as "‘fragile high self-esteem’: a high self-esteem, but built on fragile grounds, which they end up defending at all costs because deep down they know it could collapse quite easily, but they are not ready to take the risk of having to redefine their image of themselves any differently.
Constant success is not a goal, it’s a trap. Want to be free? Fail now, fail often, (ideally, fail fast), and try again.