Who Taught Us to Fear Failure?

A long walk from Prenzlauer Berg to Charlottenburg in Berlin had my brain wandering today. Have you ever thought about where the fear of failure actually comes from?

Note, it is fear of failure I am talking about. Fear of failing an exam. Fear of failing in a career. Fear of failing at a sport. Fear of failing at something you really wanted to work.

How did we come to fear failure? I don't think we are born knowing what failure is.

A child learning to walk falls hundreds of times. Nobody calls it a failure. The child certainly doesn't. Falling is simply part of learning to walk. The same happens when children learn to speak, draw, write, or ride a bicycle. They get things wrong all the time. They don't seem particularly concerned about it. They just try again.

Somewhere along the way, though, something changes.

Grades are published. Report cards go home. Parent-teacher meetings are scheduled. Exams become something to prepare for. Relatives, friends, and nosy neighbours show up. School might be the first somewhat formal place where this happens consistently. Getting something wrong slowly becomes failing.

I've been wondering where that transition happens. None of these things are inherently good or bad. They all exist for understandable reasons. But they do create an interesting environment. Failure no longer feels like just an outcome. It becomes something other people know about. Something that gets discussed as well as remembered. And if that happens often enough, it would not be surprising if we slowly started associating failure with something to avoid.

Years later, adulthood looks very different.

You apply for a job and get rejected. You spend months building a project that never finds users. You publish something nobody reads. A friendship falls apart. You mess up your taxes. The failures themselves might be much bigger than anything we experienced before. Yet they are somehow remarkably quiet. Most of the time, nobody even knows unless you decide to tell them.

Shouldn't that make us fear failure less? It is strangely quiet and hence a bit freeing.

You tried something. You failed. So what? You get up and walk again. It kind of feels like living life. No matter what we do, there will be another evening, another morning. Life around us will keep moving. A friend told me a long time ago, “Life must go on.” And it does.

So why are we still afraid?