I decided to throw back a post this week from January that was my most successful post since I’ve been on Substack. As the summer comes to an end, and we approach the last four months of 2025, I find it to be especially pertinent because perhaps there are some things the fear of failure have kept you from doing this year. Things you know you want to do, things that could even change your life, but something keeps stopping you. Maybe Fear. Judgement. Let this serve as the reminder you need that now is the perfect time to go for it. Thank you for reading.
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Baltimore was the first city to teach me about failure.
I’d failed classes before, I’d had failed relationships, and I’d even failed at sports I tried, it was quite fair to say at an early age I was already well versed in the art of failing at things.
But it wasn’t until I graduated from college and moved to Baltimore for my first job, a six-month internship with Baltimore Magazine, that I failed on a deep gut level; on a ‘this meant absolutely everything to me’ level.
For someone who grew up wanting to be a writer and had done all of the writerly things in college, when those elevator doors opened on my first day and revealed the Welcome to Baltimore sign hanging above the magazine door, I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt like I had finally arrived.
Then I met Chris, the other intern.
I quickly studied his credentials and decided mine were just as impressive. I began reading all the stories he submitted and didn’t think they were any better than my own. But we argued over assignments, both vying for the best ones to showcase our talents, because in the end, only one of us was going to be hired as a staff writer.
I was completely confident that it was going to be me. I worked hard and each time I saw my byline in print, I was downright giddy. I loved riding the train every day into Camden Yards and walking the five blocks to the office with the rest of the young professionals. This city was becoming home. I spent every lunch hour eating cobb salads and smoking cigarettes in restaurants at the Inner Harbor overlooking the water, while penning new ideas to pitch the editor. I was embodying the lifestyle of being a writer; and then I wasn’t.
“Hey, no hard feelings,” Chris said six months later with a shiteating grin, while putting out his hand, when he was hired as staff writer instead of me.
My eyes blurred with tears, and it took all my energy to shake his hand, smile,
and say, “You deserve it. Good luck,” before I turned and walked out the door of the magazine for the last time.
But I lied. I didn’t think he deserved it. I deserved it and I was crushed by the devastating blow. For the next few months, I struggled to find a full-time job in the Baltimore area, and then with my tail between my legs, had to move home to Pittsburgh.
I was a failure.
Yet somehow, a short time later, I also grasped the understanding that I had a choice as to how I let it affect me. What I did next taught me a valuable lesson I continued to use through the next four decades each and every time I failed, which was often.
First, let me define what I mean by fear of failure.
The actual term for it is atychiphobia and it’s an intense feeling of anxiety or danger around not measuring up, or being judged, by others for not accomplishing a goal. It’s that horrible sensation in the pit of your stomach that you’ll do anything to avoid when you have to look someone, or yourself, in the eye and admit you lost the money, the relationship, the job, or anything else. It’s a feeling of shame. It’s also that lingering feeling of being afraid to even try at something so you never have to experience it.
Back then, as the intern, I could have stayed down. I could have used the experience as a defining moment of what I was and wasn’t capable of accomplishing. But I didn’t. Instead, I used failure only as feedback and examined what I could learn from that situation. In effect, I changed my mindset about what failure means. What could I have done differently? Where did I fall short? I also took the skills I learned from that experience and used them to my advantage and was hired as a newspaper reporter two weeks after I got back from Baltimore.
Now decades later, my failures have grown and gotten grander and much more colossal. I’ve still failed at jobs, I had a failed marriage, and tragically, at one time, I betrayed and failed myself.
Here are three steps that have supported me every time I find myself in fear of failure:
1.) Play the tape all the way through. When I ask myself, ‘what is the worst thing that could happen or ‘how would I survive,’ and then determine how I would handle the situation, it helps me find peace in the moment and realize that I would be okay no matter what happened.
2.) Find people who have done what I want to do. Back when I was looking for an internship, I remember going on informational interviews. I’d find editors and writers who were willing to meet with me and share what they had done to get where they were. To a degree, I do something similar today. I find mentors who are succeeding and willing to share their mistakes, so I don’t make the same ones. I listen to dozens of podcasts so I am surrounded by like-minded individuals and can gain their insight and wisdom.
3.) Ask, can I live with myself if I don’t try? If I have a dream or goal burning inside me, I ask myself if I am willing to spend my whole life sitting on the sidelines wondering what would have happened if I went for it. For me, never knowing what I could have achieved is so much worse than trying and not succeeding. Then I know that at least I have grown.
I must admit my post this week is a bit selfish because I needed to be reminded of those steps today and of all the things I have gotten through. I am about to do something this year that I’ve never done, that would be a colossal failure on a deep gut level, one of those ‘this meant everything to me kind failures’ if I flop, and it’s activating all these fears in my mind.
But I also know that when I share these fears it cuts them in half and that my experience shows me that every time I fail, I fail forward.
The words of Australian poet Erin Hanson keep ringing in my ears, who said, “But what if I fall? Oh, yes, my darling … but what if you fly?”
If there is something right now that the fear of failure is holding you back from, allow this be your sign to jump two feet in into the deep end.
We’ll go for it together.
Share a comment below if this resonates, and as always, please subscribe below to get a new post in your inbox next week.
Until then.
Be Well,
Michele