Fear of Failure or Fear of Success?

Creative blocks can appear through various forms. We talked about the blank canvas syndrome in a previous post and today, we will focus on two other blocks which are deeply intertwined: the fear of failure and the fear of success. The first one is more common than the second but, in both cases, you sabotage your work because you worry about what might come next, you fear change. How to overcome these fears?

Fear of failure isn’t a particularity of artists, many of us experiment it at least once in our life. Perfectionism, lack of self-confidence, fear of the judgment of others… these features usually lead us to procrastinate and to stop taking risks, but it doesn’t have to end up this way. Failing is part of the process of growing as an artist, at one moment or another, it will happen. When we talk, if we replace “failure” by words like “practice” or “experiment,” making mistakes doesn’t sound that tragic anymore. We shouldn’t forget that great discoveries are usually made by accident, many examples throughout history prove that. Everybody learns from his mistakes, so we shouldn’t be afraid to be wrong. We truly fail if we quit or if we don’t even try something.

Sometimes you don’t think you will fail, but you just don’t imagine you can succeed at all. The first thing to do is to set personal goals and understand what success means to you. Let’s imagine you finally reach your goal, what should we do next? You can be afraid to dedicate your soul to your art, without being sure that everything will still be okay for you. An origin of that fear can be that you doubt you can replicate a previous success and disappoint people. Another myth lingers: success can go as quickly as it came. As it can be temporary, we better stay humble fearing people would criticize us. Success can also mean getting popular, meaning you could lose your personality to please others. Fame brings you in the spotlight, which makes some artists uncomfortable. What to do then? When you feel that you are getting overwhelmed, you can stop at what you are doing, take a step back, and check if the situation is under control. Success doesn’t appear overnight, most of the time it is a slow process, so we have nothing to be worried about immediately.

Fear is an emotion, let’s not forget that we always choose how we react to good and bad situations. The key to prevent that kind of emotion is to believe in ourselves and facing every task step by step. If fear remains, it means that you are committed to what you are doing, and you can turn it into motivation to improve yourself. Life is made of experiments, so let’s gather our courage and take the risk to try, it is always worth it!