In this Halloween special episode, we explore the world of fear and its impact on your business journey. We discuss the nuances of fear, focusing on fear of failure and the fear of success, dissecting how these fears manifest and the factors contributing to them.
We share our personal experience with perfectionism and the fear of not meeting benchmarks, and open up about our own realizations of fear related to family dynamics. We also talk about the importance of introspective work, setting goals, and redefining what failure and success mean to you.
Join us as we uncover the roots of your fears and share strategies for coping with and embracing fear. Discover how fear can be a powerful driving force for growth and innovation, and why it’s essential to have the right people in your circle to help you navigate these emotions. Don’t miss out on our Spotify poll and share whether you fear success or failure more. Remember, it’s all about how you adapt, grow, and deal with fear that truly matters.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Amanda’s love for Halloween and the decision to have a Halloween-themed episode.
- Focus on discussing fear and how it relates to business, specifically fear of failure and fear of success.
- Identifying differences between fear of failure and fear of success.
- Factors contributing to the fear of failure, such as imposter syndrome, negative self-talk, self-doubt, fear of judgment, criticism, social or peer pressure, self-esteem, and past traumas.
- Discussion of perfectionism as part of the fear of failure, including the fear of little failures accumulating.
- Amanda’s personal experience with perfectionism and the fear of not meeting benchmarks.
- Exploring how past family experiences and upbringing can lead to the fear of failure.
- Factors contributing to the fear of success including imposter syndrome, fear of undeserved success, loss of identity, self-sabotage tendencies, and concerns about changing dynamics in relationships and priorities.
- Lynn’s personal realization of her fear of success related to her family dynamics.
- Understanding that failure and success have different definitions for each person.
- Coping strategies for dealing with fear, such as focusing on what you can control, planning ahead, and redefining failure and success.
- The importance of introspective work to uncover the roots of fear and healing or understanding those roots.
- Learning to have grace and compassion for oneself during the process.
- The role of accountability partners in helping to recognize and navigate fear.
- Recognizing that fear is a real and natural emotion, but how you adapt, grow, and deal with it matters.
- The concept of “failing forward” and using fear as a driving force for growth and innovation.
- Encouraging listeners to participate in a poll on Spotify to share whether they fear success or failure more.
The podcast episode revolves around the themes of fear, failure, success, and personal growth. Be sure to answer our poll on Spotify, like this episode, leave a review, and subscribe wherever you listen!
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Read along in the following transcription of the show:
Lynn Howard
Yeah. Hi, I’m Lynn and I’m Amanda.
Amanda Furgiuele
Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast and happy Halloween. For those of you who celebrate Halloween, this is our Halloween special.
Lynn Howard
You should have come dressed up.
Amanda Furgiuele
I have plenty of costumes. I’m sure I could have come up with something to wear in our Halloween special.
Lynn Howard
For real, which by the way is Amanda’s favorite holiday ever.
Amanda Furgiuele
Love it. For those of you who don’t know me, it goes to a new level of weird love when it comes to me in Halloween.
And so because of that, I thought it was a necessity that we have a special Halloween themed. I’m going to say let’s do a New Year’s Eve theme, do a Christmas theme, Nick.
No, let’s do a Halloween theme. And today we’re going to talk about, I could have come up with many topics, but we’re going talk about fear because it is the spooky holiday.
And we’re talking about fear of failure. And fear of success in your business, how they affect you, how you feel it, how it manifests.
Let’s talk about fear on this festive Halloween day eve, depending on what you listen in.
Lynn Howard
No, absolutely. is such an interesting and pretty diverse, complex topic to talk about, but I am very stoked about it because it’s something that I’ve revisited.
We’ve wrote about it in our books. I think I’ve written about it in my upcoming book as well in different ways.
And it’s something that we really need to recognize and have so many stories around this. first, let’s kind of dive into like the differences between Because most people when they think of fear, they think of fear of failure.
They don’t necessarily think of fear of success. And it’s really important to understand what your root is coming from.
Is it fear of failure or fear of success? Because you navigate way feel. How to come out of that slightly differently.
And you can have both, like they don’t negate each other. And so that’s why I was saying it can be quite complex.
But let’s talk about fear of failure and fear of success. Some of the reasons why people are ways of fear of failure is that they can have a bit of imposter syndrome or negative self talk, self doubt.
It’s like fear of the judgment. Or criticism for others. Social or peer pressure. A lot of self esteem, self worth stuff.
obviously fears are rooted in something either fair of success or fear of fear. Fear of failure can often be rooted in traumas and negative past experiences.
Amanda Furgiuele
Yes, I definitely feel like perfectionism falls into this fear of fear. I know from my history and having this deep-seated fear of failure, and it’s not that I’m not succeeding in things.
It’s that based on my behavioral style, which Lynn and I talk about a lot, behavioral style. One of the big fears or one of the big attributes of my personal behavioral style is that need for not necessarily recognition, but knowing that we’re doing well at the accolades.
Not of knowing that we’re hitting these benchmarks and so not hitting them immediately puts you into this mode of for me, puts me to this mode of, oh, I’m failing because I haven’t done X, Y, if I didn’t win this award, that I’m failing at winning that.
And so that often comes up for me when I think of fear of failure is that it’s not just fear of failure of Everything like this all encompassing I failed It’s sometimes it’s the fear of like the little failures and that you’re constantly gonna have little failure after little failure
Until everybody realizes the imposter syndrome that you were no good to begin with. So a lot of that fear of failure adds up little by little every time you have this failure perceived or real, it can add up to this overwhelming big picture of failure in completion, like you failed everything.
so getting into that negative mindset and that pessimistic view of things, you can fall down this hole of imposter syndrome perfectionism.
I’m not good at anything. I’m failing at everything. And that’s where a lot of that can really be negative in your progress and growth because you start to believe in that victim mentality of like everything is wrong, everything is bad.
we spoke about victim mentality in a previous podcast episode. So that fear of failure is a big one for a lot of some of the most highly productive and big wigs in the
The world because there is so much at stake for them, whether it’s real or perceived.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about fear of success. And then we’ll kind of like break them all down for you as well.
So fear of success tends to be rooted in like also an imposter syndrome, but in a different way. It’s feeling of undeserving of the success versus like you don’t belong here because you’re going to fail.
Right. So slightly different angle. But imposter syndrome, fear of losing your identity or like your privacy can also have that fear of success.
You self-sabotage tendencies to avoid success. So there’s a lot of self-sabotaging with fear failure, also, but more, I think blatantly with fear of success.
There’s a belief that you may come at the expense of your other priorities just because you have I’ve had a This has to go.
You can’t have one without the other. Worries about your change in dynamics and your relationships and your family and things like that.
It’s really, and I remember the first time actually, understanding the difference. I was at a conference. So I always thought I had fear of failure.
Like, that was my primary. And I definitely do. Like, I’ve flown in and out. But we were at a conference and it was a wish conference.
Conscious business. And we were doing this exercise in this small group. And really, I had achieved a lot. I had a very successful few businesses.
I had already started and sold a couple of businesses throughout my lifetime. established a couple of schools in Saudi.
This was after Saudi. I was living in Hawaii at the time. So I had successes. I had a great family, etc.
but I realized that I was actually keeping myself small, so I was playing small. So that has a lot to do with fear of success.
was playing small and not hitting the financial markers that I really could have on an individual basis. was so married at the time, but with my own income because I have this fear of success.
And how I kind of understood this is, is that the way I raised my kids is that, or well, we, but I raised the kids, is like I wanted them to have like, obviously have better than what I had.
But I also wanted them to understand that you need to work for things and that you have to have work ethic and that I wasn’t going to hand them everything.
And I was actually holding myself back because I thought if I hit that certain success level, then it was just natural, where I was a jerk, to give my kids that whatever and not have them work for it.
They were going to lose connection of that work ethic and of that drive that comes from actually having to build yourself.
And I remember making that kind of connection and it was just mind blowing to me that I had a fear of success and not a fear of failure, that I thought that it would change the dynamic in my family and that I would not.
I was already always accused of being different and Amanda and I have had this conversation. mean, even goes to say like when I would go home to my family, would be caught, be called not necessarily a sellout, but that’s a word that’s coming to me because I ironed my clothes and the people in my family didn’t iron their clothes.
And so I was already used to being like the oddball out of my family because I wanted different. I saw different.
I believed in different. That didn’t make what they believed, you know, worse or worse. I didn’t want them to lose that connection to the hustle, to the grind, to what really made their dad and I who we were because we overcame so much.
Amanda Furgiuele
I 100% agree with you on that and I have that same feeling of it’s to the point where it’s like I don’t want to win lottery not because I don’t like the money but because I don’t know I don’t want that kind of notoriety.
don’t want how it would change me and how it would take away that grit and grind that my kid.
I’m not saying that I want him to suffer. It’s clear, but I was raised so much on the idea that you have to work for things, you have to have that work ethic and I’m, a long time, was really afraid of putting him in a position where he wouldn’t have to learn that because he
You would have everything so that fear success, 100% believe that. lot of the fear of failure, and some I think a lot of the fear of failure stems from how you’re raised and growing up in a critical and in some cases, unsupportive family can lead you towards that fear of failure because if you felt you could never live up to your family’s expectations as a child, it can sometimes manifest as an adult and that you’re continuing to fear making those mistakes.
many reasons, and Lynn and I have spoken about this, we had some of that perfectionism for different reasons. However, it’s that hypercritical and wanting to avoid making mistakes that led to that perfectionism, which sometimes fear of failure stems from that perfectionist tendency.
And also, it’s important to understand that failure has different definitions. So for some, it’s not achieving something the way you would planned to achieve it.
Even if you do achieve it. So, for example, if I won the lottery tomorrow, but I hadn’t won the lottery or hadn’t earned that money, I would feel like that was a failure because, I know it’s weird, I would feel like winning the lottery would be a failure because I didn’t earn that money from working.
And so, it just manifests differently and you can create your own set of expectations that are very difficult to live up to and can lead to that sense of fear of failure because of the way you’ve defined it.
Lynn Howard
Oh, absolutely. And it’s interesting that you say that because it is true. we know we want something, we see it, we can do it, we can be it, we can have it, and yet there’s these little voices in our heads, these little patterns that we’ve developed when we don’t actually look at it that hold us back.
And I want to say, like, sometimes it’s not really obvious that you’re sitting in a fear. I want to break down some things that might happen if you’re sitting in fear of success or fear of failure is stagnation.
You’re just seated at the same point. I was literally having this conversation last night with a girlfriend. I was like, we’re talking about life and about other people and about how, essentially, I’m a go-getter, That’s the basis of what we represent.
We get shit done. We’re in pursuit of an asteroid, right? And then we have other people who are in the same spot five months, six months later.
And they really don’t understand. And they’re vibrant and they’re just beautiful and making all of the moves, but nothing’s happening.
It’s because there’s a fear that’s kind of rooted behind, that’s given them that stagnation, right? And they can’t necessarily see it right now, even if other in
It’s hard for me to wind down, even talking about it like I’m starting to feel over my chest. Damn it, damn it.
Some other things are like limit, like you limit your choices, like you actually like don’t make moves. You start to really draw and works on your self-esteem.
So your self-esteem will start to change, your outlook on yourself will start to change. You absolutely miss opportunities because you’re not as wide-eyed and opened when you’re sitting in the You strain relationships around you when you’re sitting in fears because like Amanda was saying,
Early, you can tend to be in more victim mode or reactive mode, and you’re not necessarily in a proactive, like, movement way, right?
You might lean too much on people. Definitely procrastination, which is a part of me. I know when I am sitting in fear, I will procrastinate.
Just overall unhappiness, and it can also affect your health. really, like, sitting in that fear, and we talk about it a lot, and I know I talk about it a lot, especially with my cancer journey.
Like, it hurts you.
Amanda Furgiuele
It hurts you. Yes, and we’re all about action and, like, how to get out of this world. for me, because both Lynn and I have done quite a few deep dives in our own personalities, our own behaviors, and how we have dealt in the past and present with whatever’s going on.
And for me, a lot of the things that helped me get out of this sense of fear, whether it’s fear, a failure, or fear of success, because I get both.
The first thing I do is focus on things I can control. Control control and it’s stopping the worry about the assets in situation that you just don’t have power over because there’s always things that you can’t control.
But if you focus your energy on the solutions, things you can control, it’s going to shift in your mind that feeling that you’re helpless, hopeless, that anxiety, it’s going to give it a little bit of And a damper because what you don’t want is that downward spiral where you’re just going to be spiraling into anxiety, you want to reduce that anxiety so that you can pursue your goals.
And then along with that control, I like to plan ahead. If there’s a trigger I know that’s going to come, I try to mitigate that as much as possible.
Having like a preplanned plan B or plan C, plan X, whatever it comes to, can also help with that.
And then I mentioned earlier about redefining what’s What failure and what success means to you can make such a big difference because changing how you think about failure will reduce your feelings of fear because failure is a part of life.
Failure is something that’s going to happen no matter how controlled you are and it is an important opportunity for you to learn and to acquire new skills and to acquire new signs of yourself that you didn’t know existed.
So understanding that failure is not anybody’s ideal but it can can still be an incredible teacher and an opportunity for you to learn and grow beyond what you are afraid of.
So embracing that and redefining how you see success, how you see failure can really shift in your mind, how you deal with it when it arises and it will.
Lynn Howard
I love that and absolutely when you think of it from more of a logical standpoint of you, like the logical side, not the emotional or the connected side but you know like that you are going to fail more than you will succeed and that’s
That’s like, you know, until you succeed, right? And then you have that pattern of success. think of like when you first got on a bike to ride a bike, you fell off more times than you were able to, to like roll down the street, right?
When you first started learning to swim, you didn’t just like Olympic swim that pool, like you had to like drown a little bit talking about it.
Hang on to the side, whatever. And you had to work through it. And I know we spoke about this.
I can’t remember if we actually did a podcast about it. I talk a lot about failing forward. And I love that concept because you want to use momentum.
You know that you’re going to fail failures a part of life. And even with the logical side, like just really moving that forward.
And I know it’s not necessarily what we’re talking about today. I could explore we did a podcast. We do a podcast on fail forward.
Amanda Furgiuele
We discussed it in a podcast.
Lynn Howard
We’ll do a whole podcast on failing board because I think that that’s really important. But a couple of Other aspects of how to work on your failure is.
And this is definitely, Amanda and she said it earlier, we do a lot of introspective work. We look within.
I’m a big believer of finding the root of why you feel that way. healing from there, if at all possible, or understanding it, at least.
going back to the example about my kids, I grew up in a household that was obviously abusive. Like those of you who are just tuning in, like I talked about in past podcasts and in our books.
I had this dad who would always like talk crap about the wealthy and about success and how they were sellouts.
And I grew up in this culture in my environment where, you know, if you made out the hood, like you were sellout.
Like a lot of people, I’m not saying that I grew up in the hood, but that was like the culture that I grew up around.
And that if you made it out, you’re this like, you’re somebody who, you know. I’m really excited to see I’m I’m see that I’m excited that I’m excited that I’m really excited see that I’m excited see that I’m excited see that I’m see that I’m really see that I’m really see really excited see that see that excited see that that I’m see that I’m really excited that that that I’m
Helping me understand the root of that, that it didn’t have to be the whole complete opposite of what I was trying to, the direction I was trying to go, was because I made peace with the root.
Also like learning, I love that you said learning, I’m definitely a control person too, what can I control now?
And also setting like those goals, but also learning to have grace and compassion for myself, which was a huge lesson for me.
Because I could have grace and compassion for others, I definitely understand empathy in a very different way. I think it was just kind of like born with it, even though I’m a high D as well in the disc assessment.
learning that grace and compassion with myself and saying, okay, this is, you know, this is where I’m at, this is why I’m feeling this way, how can I best move forward and understand like, you know, especially, we all have our past and I love that Amanda said that failure is.
I think that probably the little thing that constantly putting in the work, having the grace and compassion for ourselves to continue to move forward.
And I think that that’s probably the little laugh aspect that I would say is always understanding the root, having that grace and compassion during the process of the goal setting, the logical side, and then being persistent and patient with yourself and moving through.
And the very last thing I would also say is finding people around you who can call you out on it, not your yes people, and not your necessarily your hardcore accountability buddies, but those that can unpack shit with you.
Amanda is definitely like, we are that. I’m not if you’re in this, but I’m if I’m interested in I’m not interested this.
interested this. I’m not sure interested this. sure you’re interested I’m not sure if you’re interested this. Somebody else was talking—and we talk a lot about this.
they were saying every time they had a new level of success that their groups would change, their people would change.
It’s because those people tend to keep the fears and their own fears to keep you in a certain spot.
Not because they don’t want you to succeed, but because it’s a protective shell. Fear can keep us protected. but growth and change in innovation does not happen.
We’re the comfort zone and so we constantly have to also up level our people around us, not just our accountability people.
I know that was a lot, but there’s just so much.
Amanda Furgiuele
I feel like we get that involved on this subject. We always talk a lot about every subject. One other thing that Lynn said is that she and I are accountability partners for each other and sometimes that might not be that Lynn needs to call me out.
It might be I’ve called myself out and I use Lynn as a way to. So I might tell her like this is where I am right now.
This is what I’m thinking about. I recognize that is fear or just psycho thoughts. I just needed to tell somebody who wouldn’t judge me so that you can make sure I like check me on it because I’m feeling that way now.
So sometimes that accountability partner when it comes to fear or if you’re a failure or success, even if you recognize it, it’s nice sometimes to have somebody who can just.
Sit with you. In that space for a little bit, recognize it and help you hold yourself accountable because sometimes it’s not that you can’t always account on somebody else to pull you out of it.
Lynn Howard
A lot of times it has to be you.
Amanda Furgiuele
And it’s just nice to know that there you could have somebody in your circle that can help recognize that and sit with you in it as you get yourself out.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. I’m smiling because it literally happened last week because I’m about to, by the time this is published, it’s already in person.
It’s already in process now, but I’m about to release my book in December, my personal book. And it’s very personal, very, and very vulnerable.
Amanda’s like, and I’ve been, I sat on it. I sat on it for weeks, not sending it to the copy editor.
This meeting is being recorded. But there’s like, Amanda like really helped me unpack it and it’s been holding me accountable.
So that way I can make sure that it’s getting done and she’s making sure that it’s getting done. But I was chuckling because it literally just happened last week so I can like move forward.
Amanda Furgiuele
Well I mean I’m laughing too because I had the same thing when I said you an email. Like this is the kind of crazy I’m thinking right now and you’re like Amanda don’t be crazy.
Lynn Howard
And I like I recognize that I was being crazy.
Amanda Furgiuele
I didn’t tell somebody so I didn’t go down that rabbit hole because now I it’s out there. So don’t let me be crazy.
So it manifests in different ways and you I mean we say this a lot like find your people, find your executive team, find that but really deep dive and that’s something we want to leave you with really deep dive.
But what are the roots of your fear of success or your feel of failure? How can you overcome that?
Can you control or shift your mindset in a way that will amplify the good and downplay all the negatives that are going to come up from that, whether that’s mental or physical, real, whatever that looks like for you?
Fear is a real thing, failure is a real thing, success is a real thing, they’re all real. And it’s all about how you adapt and how you grow and how you change and how you deal with it that matters.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. I just, like I heard, because we’re both just finishing. don’t know if you finished it, but we’re reading 10x by Grant Cardone.
And he talks about fear and he said that he feels fear, but he doesn’t allow time and space to amplify that fear.
And I think that that’s one thing when I heard this, because I listened to the Audible, I don’t know if you’re listening to Audible or reading it.
But when I heard him say, I thought of Amanda and I because that’s really like we teach this, we get it done, we will feel it but we’ll move in it.
However, and make things happen and fail forward. But we don’t allow the fear typically to hold us down. So you can use the fear to drive you, but you can also the fear could use you to keep you safe.
So it’s really interesting kind of dichotomy of where you sit and how you’re maneuvering that. Because you’re always going to have it.
It’s just what you do with it and how much time and space that you give it. So I think that that like that popped in my mind and I felt like that was really important to say because you’re still going to feel it.
And again, remember, like it’s uncomfortable to grow. Innovation happens, creation happens in discomfort, in the roughness. You know, it’s like the lotus blooming through the mud.
It has to go through the shit in order to be able to be this beautiful flower. And if it feared.
The road ahead or coming through the mud, it would never bloom. And that’s really what we’re all about. if you continue to live in fear, it’s going to keep you in a certain place and it’s not going to allow you to fully blossom into who you are.
But you can learn to fail forward and understand that failure is a part of life. Success is you deserve it.
Whatever position you’re coming from, like either the failure that it’s just going to happen. And logically, it’s going to happen more times than not.
And the whole success thing is the hope you deserve it. You belong there. You are worthy of it. really, like, continue to remind yourself to jump in and just, just allow that fear to drive you.
Allow that to move you forward and do what you deserve to do and what you are destined to be.
Amanda Furgiuele
100%. And I’m curious, there is a poll on Spotify. Are you more afraid of fear or afraid of failure or are you more afraid of success, there’s a poll in Spotify.
If you are listening, go in and take that. We’d like to see where our listeners sit in the fear factor.
So let us know if you are feeling more of a fear of success or a fear of failure right now.
Lynn Howard
And again, we might float in between them, but just right now, where are you in the world of things as we close up or come into an end of this year.
Where are you sitting?
Amanda Furgiuele
Absolutely. Until next time, get after it.
