Of the things I have feared most in my life; the fear of failure is probably my biggest fear of all. It has played a major role in the way I have lived my life so far, but my expedition this summer has been a great learning school. Time to re-evaluate my fears.

In school, my fear of failure meant that I didn’t pursue the subjects I didn’t think I was good at. When invited to read out loud, I would go bright red and keep my mouth shut. I refused to do it until I had practiced so much with my dad at home, that I was absolutely 100% sure I could do it without making mistakes.

How can failing help?

Self-help and management books will always tell you about the importance of failure. They will say it means you try and try again, and that it improves your chances of succeeding.

Yesterday, I heard an interesting analogy: Think of a toddler learning to walk. It keeps standing up, takes a few steps, but keeps falling over. The child might cry and be disappointed or frustrated, but it keeps pushing itself up and tries again. Initially, the muscles of the child are not strong enough to support its weight in a standing position. All the pushing up and standing up strengthens her muscles; and the practice improves her balance, until she finally can do it; she stands and walks, and soon she is running around the park. She will still fall over sometimes, but the child never thinks she isn’t good enough. She merely gets up and tries again.

Avoiding failure

Still, planning my expedition, the fear of failure wasn’t far from my mind. As I wrote in an earlier post, it shaped the way I set my goal. Instead of setting a destination as my goal, I chose to paddle for 2 ½ months, and see where I would end up. That way, I couldn’t fail, as long as I kept paddling, keeping the land on my right.

How did I fail?

Did I not fail at all during my trip? Well, you could definitely say I did, but it is interesting to see how my thoughts about those instances changed the way I feel about those moments.

It is also interesting to note, how those moments felt different when there were others around than when I was alone.
You could say that every time I landed at low water was a failure to plan well, as it meant that, tired as I was at the end of a long day of paddling, I had to carry my kayak a long way up the beach, to a safe spot above the high-water line. Was it really a failure? You could also say that I pushed myself to keep going, to keep paddling even after a favourable tide. Or you could say that I had listened to my body and had given it time to recover by taking it easy in the morning.

The thought I had messed up might have crossed my mind, but I never berated myself about it. Even when the work at the end of the day was hard, I could laugh about it and be very forgiving to myself.

The day I tried to get out of the surf and flipped over with Pete Bray watching was harder. Even though I tried to hide it, I did feel embarrassed that I hadn’t managed to get out of the surf in one go.

What really happened when I failed?

Pete was a great coach and didn’t laugh at me. He asked me what I could have done better and walked me up on the rocks to look out at sea and find the best line to try again. He also fired me up by saying “you are not letting the North Cornwall coast be the one that beats you, are you?”. And he told me to believe in myself. In the end, I fired myself up enough to go for it again. I kept repeating in my mind: “I can and I will, I can and I will, I can and I will…” And I could. And I did.

I had learned that I could only break through if I calculated my timings, stayed focused and kept my confidence. But in the back of my mind, I did allow it to break my confidence a bit. I had to focus hard and use lots of positive self-talk to get through the challenges of that day.

You could say that my major failure was the day I had to be rescued. Be it a failure to investigate the places I had identified as possible landing places better. Or failure to question myself after not finding Boscastle where it should have been according to my map. Or not having the courage to land in big surf. And most of all for not having trained landing in big surf often enough before my trip. I could have called the RNLI to help me land in Bude when I got there when the sun was setting. Or I could have tried to get back in my kayak after stranding.

The upside of failing

When I did fail, bad enough that I had to call the Coastguard, it actually didn’t feel so bad. The Coastguard and the boys from the RNLI never made me feel like I was a failure; or that I wasn’t good enough to go on an expedition like this. They didn’t even make me feel I had made any bad mistakes that day.

Quite the contrary, they complimented me on my courage to go out there and push myself. The RNLI volunteers who saved me told me that some of them had been rescued themselves at some point, because pushing yourself means that sometimes things go wrong and that it is OK.

Interesting too, is that my ‘failure’ resulted in a meeting of new friends. I gained as much respect from these men for the things I had achieved so far, for the way I had been prepared and the way I handled the situation that night, as I had for their bravery and willingness to get out through the surf, in the middle of the night, to get a stranger out of trouble.

Contrary to my fears, my failure didn’t lead to rejection. It led to new friends, a hot shower, a warm bed and inclusion in a circle of very brave people who I admire a lot.

So, maybe I should keep all this in mind when my fear of failure next pops up?

How about you? Do you have any moments in life where your ‘failure’ led to good things? What did you learn along the way?