“Have no fear of perfection. You will never reach it.”—Salvador Dali
JK ROWLING
As an adult, I’m still in awe at the magical world, plot, and characters in Harry Potter. The Harry Potter franchise has generated an estimated revenue of over $25 billion worldwide. JK Rowling, the author behind the iconic series, knows a thing or two about failure. In fact, she credits her struggles as the driving force behind her massive success as a writer. Not only did she overcome the challenges of being an unemployed, newly divorced, young single parent, but she learned from it.
In 2008, Rowling gave an acceptance speech at Harvard. She shared her insights as a wise, motivated, and self-determined person who faced the difficulties of balancing her own ambitions with the limitations others placed on her. She wanted to be a writer, but her parents didn’t believe she could find success in that career path. But Rowling proved them wrong, and she did it all through hard work, determination, and a willingness to learn from her failures.
Shortly after graduation, the birth of her child, and a short-lived marriage, she experienced firsthand “the fear, depression, stress, humiliation, and hardships” that poverty brings. At rock bottom, she realized that she feared failure more than poverty. This motivated her to overshadow her fear of failure by her desire to succeed.
“Why do I talk about the benefits of failure?” she said. “Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I succeeded in anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I believed I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive.”
The process was liberating. During her speech, she made a statement that sums up the fear of failure in a nutshell. She said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
FEAR OF FAILURE
As a creative person, there’s nothing scarier than staring down a blank canvas. You start asking yourself all sorts of questions: What am I going to create? Am I going to mess this up? Will people like it? Did I bite off more than I can chew?
Fear of failure is a common issue for creative types. It can stem from basic self-doubt and build up to doubts about the success of your career. After all, creativity is an expression of self, and when others judge your work, it can feel like a personal attack. Every time you share your ideas with the world, you open yourself up to the possibility of negative criticism.
And when it comes to our careers, we often feel pressure to succeed because we think failure reflects poorly on our creative reputation. Simply put, creators fear failure because of the judgment of others. The scary thing about judgment is how influential it can be if you believe it. Creative people who struggle with self-doubt and may worry that their ideas aren’t good enough or that they’re not capable of creating successful work.
THE PYGMALION EFFECT
Kanye once said, “I always feel like I can do anything. That’s the main thing people are controlled by. Their perception of themselves. They’re slowed down by their perceptions of themselves. If you’re taught you can’t do anything you won’t do anything. I was taught I can do anything.” The Pygmalion Effect, also known as the Rosenthal Effect, is a phenomenon that shows how the expectations of others can significantly impact an individual’s performance. This was accidentally discovered with a group of elementary school students. First, teachers tested the kids and then accidentally placed the lowest-scorers in advanced classes and the highest-scorers in the lower classes. Both the students and teachers believed they were supposed to be in those classes.
Six months went by before they realized the mistake that had been made, but the results were shocking. The students who were originally underperforming actually outperformed the other classroom of academically stronger students in every measure. This has two key takeaways: other people’s beliefs about us influence their actions towards us, and their actions towards us influence and reinforce our beliefs about ourselves.
The Pygmalion Effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It proves that we rise or fall to the expectations placed upon us by the people we surround ourselves with. Other people’s judgment about your creativity can cause you to doubt yourself and fuel your fear of failure if you don’t intentionally block it.
There’s a chance that you’ve already fallen into this psychological trap. But there’s still hope. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and that’s where Atkinson’s theory of achievement motivation comes into play.
ATKINSON’S THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION
How do some creators overcome fear and reach high levels of creative success? That’s what Atkinson’s theory of achievement motivation tries to explain. Atkinson says that achievement-motivation is a mix of things, but mainly it’s an individual’s personal need for achievement—the desire to succeed and excel at tasks and activities. This need for achievement can be strong or weak, depending on someone’s beliefs about themselves. According to this psychological theory, people who are more achievement-motivated tend to be more focused on their goals, work harder to reach them, and aren’t afraid to face obstacles or setbacks.