126 How to Overcome the FEAR of FAILURE

"Failure is not a failure; it's a lesson and feedback." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes at www.lewishowes.com/126. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:11Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone? Thank you so much for joining me today on this special episode of Five Minute Fridays. We're going to be covering a topic in about five to 15 minutes. And I want to respond to someone who reached out to me actually on Instagram. His name is Gary Carrillo and he said, Louis, I don't know where to start. I want to do great things, start a blog that motivates young people to keep moving forward, but fear of failure is keeping me back. Do you have any podcasts where you might cover this? Well, Gary, thanks for reaching out. I'm listening to you. I'm listening to everyone. And yes, I do have an episode. It's this one. Fear of failure is keeping you back. Okay, I want to dive in fear today, guys.

• 0:56Lewis Howes?

  Here's the thing, I am terrified of a lot of things. I'm scared shitless of ending up alone. I'm just going to tell you guys right now, I'm scared shitless of being alone, of nobody loving me, of nobody accepting me, of people making fun of me. I'm scared of all those things because it was a fear of mine as a child growing up where I was constantly being picked on, constantly being made fun of. I never felt secure in my own body, in my own ideas. I always felt insecure because I felt everyone else around me, my family, my friends,

• 1:41Lewis Howes?

  were all smarter than me and way more intelligent. So I never felt like worthy of being in the same room of people. And therefore I didn't even want to like open my mouth because I just didn't feel like I belonged. And I don't know if anyone can resonate with that or anyone can connect with that of not feeling good enough, not feeling smart enough, not feeling educated enough. Again, I was in the bottom four every single semester in high school. They would give us grade cards at private school and they would rank us. So this is the worst thing that a kid can have is a ranking if you're one of the stupidest kids in the school. And I always felt like I had wisdom in other ways, right?

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  Street wisdom or street smarts, but I never could figure out how to grade well, how to test well. It was really hard for me to study and read and write. It was just a challenge. And so therefore I lacked the confidence and was, it held me back in a lot of ways of going after certain things because I was afraid that if I did fail, people would make fun of me. They would laugh at me. They would talk about me behind my back and no one would want to hang out with me. And I think that's the biggest fear, you know, I've had my entire life is no one wants to spend time with me. And I've definitely evolved and overcome that fear in a lot of ways, but there's always that inner kid inside of me that, you know, can sometimes second guess myself and

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  sometimes hold myself back from my own greatness. And I want to talk about this fear and I want to say thanks to Gary for reaching out and for asking it and from putting yourself out there that you're afraid of failure. And here's what I want to talk about. So what if you fail? So what? If you fail after going after something that you are excited about, that is a positive mission, you say you want to create a blog for, that motivates young people to keep moving forward. If you're on your mission, doing something that inspires you, that you're passionate about,

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  that you are happy when you do it. So what if you fail? The thing is, guys, you are going to fail on the path to whatever greatness you want to achieve. It's going to happen. You just need to shift your thinking around it and stop thinking about it as a failure and start thinking about it as a lesson and as an opportunity to get feedback on what's working and what's not working.

• 4:13Lewis Howes?

  So failure is not a failure. It's a lesson and feedback to show you what's effective and what's ineffective. And once you start focusing on that and looking at it differently. So that you are seeing it as feedback as opposed to. Oh, I messed up. I screwed up. I suck. I'm a horrible human being. I'm not smart enough. I'm not talented enough. I don't know what I'm doing. No one is ever going to buy my product. No one's ever going to invest in me. No one is ever going to hire me. No one's ever going to marry me or love me because I suck. If you do that, I can guarantee you, you're not going to get what you want.

• 4:51Lewis Howes?

  So if you do that, you're going to continue a negative cycle of insecurities, of lack of momentum. You're definitely not going to want to take action after you talk about how horrible you are and how much you suck in life. So the only thing you can really start doing is focusing on gratitude first. Focusing on what you're grateful for in this moment, right now, and in the past, what you have. Focus on the opportunity at hand, even if it may not seem like a great opportunity. Focus on what you do have first and stick true to who you are. You know, it's funny when you think about, when I think about freedom. I think about having the opportunity to do what I want and pursue what I want on my terms.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Not following my passion of what someone else wants me to do. Or what my parents want me to do, or my siblings, or my friends, or what people tell me. They, they try to manipulate me into doing. Freedom really comes from me pursuing my passion at a hundred percent. And feeling so good about myself in doing that. It doesn't matter if other people don't agree with it. Or if other people are scared that you're going after your passion of art or music or dance. When they really want you to be a doctor or a lawyer. Because they feel like it'll be a safer route for you. If that doesn't feel good for you, don't stop doing what you love.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Continue and move into doing what you love full speed ahead. It's gonna be scary. You are going to have lessons, right? Not failures, but lessons. And that's okay.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  So what if you quote unquote fail? So what if you're just, if you get to learn constantly? You know, failure is equal to learning and lessons. Then you're constantly in school. Look at it as that way. You're constantly taking tests and taking homework assignments. And you're just practicing until it comes, until the real thing. We spend 20 years in school, or however long it is, from ages four to 22. Almost 20 years. Some people spend 28 years if they're going to be a doctor, right? They're spending all this time in school before they actually start making money. Before they actually start living a quote unquote life. They're taking lessons for almost a third of their life, some people,

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  before they actually start doing anything with their life. Instead, if you're a young person or any point in your life, what if you actually started doing something? Something you're passionate about, that you want to make money around? If you're afraid because you don't know what to do? Look at it as, okay, cool. I've got four years to study. And I've got four years of lessons. And who are the teachers along the way? And what are the things, the homework assignments that I'm going to practice in the real world? Where I'm not going to make any money? Where I'm not going to have any success? But I might have a little bit of success along the way and it might continue to get better and better. And maybe my grades will go from a D to a B to an A in the next year, in the next two years.

• 7:56Lewis Howes?

  And the lessons, your grades, will be feedback for you. If you're not making any money, then you're getting an F. And that's feedback. If you're making a little bit of money and seeing, oh, there's some press covering me. There's people talking about me. My audience is growing. People are opting into my website. I'm, you know, things are starting to flow for me. Okay, cool. Then you got a C plus. You're average. If you start making, you know, a full-time living around doing what you love, then you're getting an A, my friends. You're getting an A. If you get a full-time living doing what you love, you spend all that energy and your passion into movement and momentum of doing what you love. And you're getting the results you're looking for.

• 8:41Lewis Howes?

  The feedback is positive. Then your grades are working. And the grades are the results in the real world. Fear of not doing that is really, in my opinion, is, is basically setting yourself up for failure for the rest of your life. And you're doing a disservice to yourself, but not only to yourself, to the world. I feel like when we feel fear about doing something we love, when we feel fear and we, and we hesitate and we don't go after it because we're afraid of failure. We're afraid of what people are going to say, or think, or do, or not do. We're afraid of people hating us or leaving negative reviews.

• 9:25Lewis Howes?

  When we hold back our gifts, we're doing a huge disservice to ourselves because we are, we are becoming prisoners of fear. We're becoming prisoners of fear and not taking action or having any momentum moving forward. We are also doing a huge disservice and being so extremely selfish in the world by holding back our gifts, by not fully committing to multiply our gifts and share them with the world, we're doing a massive disservice and we're extremely selfish when we do that. And every day I think about this, am I fully giving my gifts to the world? Or am I allowing fear to imprison me and hold me back because I'm afraid of what people are going to say about me?

• 10:10Lewis Howes?

  Now, I understand it doesn't feel good when people say bad things or negative things. It doesn't feel good. No one likes that feeling. I don't like it. I'm like the biggest person in the world who doesn't like that, you know? Because as a kid, I was always picked last and always felt stupid and insecure. So I definitely don't like that. But building that momentum, finding, inspiring people to surround yourself with who do support you, who will have your back. You know, I've got your back. Finding those people to support you and lift you up when everyone else says you're stupid and you suck and you're a failure, that's what's going to support you in getting to the next level and, and taking that next class and taking the next test and applying

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  it in the real world and making a real difference and impact in the world by giving your gifts away. So fear of failure is something we must destroy. We must let go of, we must let go of that attachment of thinking it's going to happen and start embracing fear. Start embracing failure.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  Start embracing failure as the lessons that are necessary in order for you to graduate and getting to the next level of school in the real world. That's my five minute Friday motivation today, guys. Thank you guys so much. You guys asked me to make them between five minutes and 15 minutes. So we're doing that on this one today. I appreciate the question that I got from Gary over on Instagram. Thank you, Gary, for that. I appreciate you and I'm excited about these. I'm going to keep doing these for a while. Give me some feedback. Leave a comment over on the blog. This is episode 126, lewishouse.com/126. Let me know what you guys think about this message about fear.

• 12:01Lewis Howes?

  Has fear controlled you? Has fear made you feel like a prisoner? Has fear of failure held back your gifts for how long? Remember that it's never too late to start taking action on your dreams. I don't care how old you are, how young you are. Now is the time, right now, to start taking one step toward living your dreams. You guys are incredible. I love you guys so much. Again, check out lewishouse.com/126. If this inspired you, please share it with a friend and I've got many more of these to come. I love you guys. You know what time it is. Time to go out there and do something great.