Success is often muted or even missed entirely over the fear of failure. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about the key factors involved in the Fear of Failure.

Rob Artigo: Ray, another one of those nasty little things that get in the way of success is fear of failure. In your opinion, is the fear of failure fairly common?

Ray Zinn: Yes, absolutely. I think all of us, everyone, has some pain or fear factor.

Rob Artigo: I was looking at a list of a couple of things that I guess are signs that you may have some issues, like some fear of failure, and one of those is self-doubt where you’re constantly second-guessing yourself and your decisions.

Ray Zinn: Again, what kind of personality are you? An A-type personality, B or C or whatever, D, E, F, G, whatever. Try to understand what your personality is. Your fear factor plays an important role in what you’re attempting to do. If you’re afraid of blood or if you don’t like blood, then I wouldn’t go become a doctor, at least not a surgeon anyway. And if you have a fear of heights, I don’t know that you’d want to be a parachuter or run a parachute company.

Rob Artigo: Window washing company on the side of a building.

Ray Zinn: Pardon?

Rob Artigo: A window washing company when you’re working on the side of a building.

Ray Zinn: At 10,000 feet or something.

Rob Artigo: Some crazy thing. Yeah.

Ray Zinn: So again, you got to look at what kind of fear factor you have. If you’re afraid of cutting people’s hair even or whatever or don’t like it because the hygienic aspect of it, don’t do it or overcome it. Some people have overcome their fears by attempting certain things and becoming used to it. So fear or self-doubt will actually limit your success.

Rob Artigo: And I think of it as also being risk averse. We’ve talked about that on this podcast several times, but in this context, because you’re constantly second guessing yourself and the decisions that you make, it’s a risk aversion thing. Your tolerance is not there for handling tough choices.

Ray Zinn: Sure. In investing, if you’re risk averse, don’t go into the actual stock market. Maybe you want to go into bonds or in the treasury bonds or something like that as opposed to just diving into some of the high fliers like the Magnificent Seven, I guess they call them. So again, understanding your pain factor, your fear factor, that’ll help you navigate through all these different dilemmas that you’re going to face in life.

Rob Artigo: And one of the other factors here, or at least signs that you’re suffering from a fear of failure is procrastination. You simply just put off tasks and decisions because you fear that they’re not going to work out.

Ray Zinn: Well, procrastination is probably one of the most dangerous aspects we can have in our life, because if you’re going to put something off, you’re just not going to succeed. In our book, the Tough Things First, we talk about diving in, finding out, learn to love the things you hate. And so that to me is probably the hallmark statement that we want to make, is if you want to be a success, learn to love the things you hate, find out what you don’t want to do and then just keep doing it until you like doing it.

And that’s what I’ve done, is I just keep working on things that I hate to do, and pretty soon I end up loving to do it. Writing books, I hated writing books, so what’d I do? I started writing books and now I love it. Now I really enjoy doing it. It’s become a passion of mine. So again, you can turn that fear into an advantage if you’re willing to learn to love the things you hate.

Rob Artigo: The next one after that is avoidance. I think it’s part and parcel with procrastination. It falls under the same category here of fear of failure, but just basically steering clear of challenges or new opportunities just because they might not succeed. That’s like not taking any chances because you have so much doubt about yourself that you just don’t want to do it.

Ray Zinn: That’s living in a bubble. If you’re not willing to get outside the bubble, then you’re not going to go anywhere because you’ll be trapped by the encased bubble you put around yourself.

Rob Artigo: And then also, just the language that you use when you’re referring to yourself. I think we’ve all run into occasionally the person who does the, oh, woe is me scenario. Every time they open their mouths, they go… “Hey, have you done that?” “Oh, no, I just [inaudible 00:04:59]. I got this and I can’t do that, and blah, blah.” And then it’s like, “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough.”

Ray Zinn: That’s the victim mentality.

Rob Artigo: “It won’t succeed.” Victim mentality?

Ray Zinn: Victims roll themselves up in a rug and just ignore what’s around them. And of course, if you’re a victim type person, if you’re saying, woe is me, if you’re saying, I can’t do this or I can’t do that, you might as well just dig a hole and bury yourself.

Rob Artigo: Wow. Now, you did mention do the tough things first. It’s title of your book, but also your motto, tough things first. So that has always been a great example of one of the ways to get over this stuff, is, like you said, it’s the things that you don’t like that can propel you to success because you get them out of the way and you get to spend the rest of the time doing the things that you are really excited about doing.

It frees you up and allows you to, I guess, overcome those things that might make you feel like you’re doing the slog a little bit. And then you get it over with, and then you find yourself working on a route to success.

Ray Zinn: That’s the key. If you’re always doing the easy stuff, the stuff that you like doing, you’re not going to learn much. Doing things you don’t know and don’t understand and that you have some doubt or fear about is where you really need to start, the tough things. Do the tough things first and then everything else will follow. Doing the easy stuff is not going to help you grow, not going to help you progress. Get out of that bubble you put around yourself and take on some of the things you don’t like doing. Learn a lot of the things you hate.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can join you at toughthingsfirst.com if they have any questions. They can also continue their education and the conversation. There’s podcasts and blogs and links to information about Ray’s books, the Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn Series one, two, and three, and of course, the new book you’ll want to get your hands on, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and the Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn.

Ray Zinn: Please get our new book, give us a review, tell us what you like, what you don’t like, so we can improve. We maybe even want to do a sequel once we get that feedback from you about what you think of our view of the essential leader. And then maybe we’ll do a sequel that takes into consideration some of your thoughts.

Rob Artigo: Make your opinions known. We will definitely appreciate it, and we’ll take it to heart. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.