Success Seeker vs. Failure Avoider Mindset

We are all born dreamers. When we're children, we marvel at the world. We have tea parties with imaginary friends, we role play and imagine ourselves as police(wo)men, doctors, actresses or fire marshals. Growing up, we pay attention to everything we see and hear. And that's one way our beliefs about the world, life and ourselves are molded. If we grow up in a disempowering environment where a fixed mindset, for example being "perfect" and not making mistakes is valued, we are likely to grow up with a desire to avoid failure. On the flip side, if we grow up with parents who encourage us to take risks and view failure as an opportunity to learn and grow, we'll grow up being growth minded.

Now, there's no shame in knowing that we're failure avoiders. In fact, most people are. Most of us have been trained from an early age to focus on success and avoid failures. But what if I told you that seeking out failure is the key to success? Think about it: every time we fail, we learn something new. I don't know about you, but I have never learned anything new and useful from succeeding at something. All my learnings have come from things going sideways in my life. Each time, I learned something new and become a little bit more successful. So, if we're not failing occasionally, we're not really pushing ourselves to our full potential.

So, it's important to ask ourselves where our beliefs come from. Are our beliefs our own or are they the beliefs of our parents, entourage, community, and society at large? I've been doing a lot of soul searching and am realizing that some of the beliefs I hold true are not really my own. In fact, they go against what I now believe to be right for me. For example, I have this baked-in need for perfection. It comes from my upbringing. I learned I had to be the perfect child by not misbehaving in public, by listening to what my parents said. I remember clearly anytime we behaved like normal children, which invariably resulted in making noise and being visible to those around us, my dad would give us the "big eyes". And I knew what that meant: "quiet down or ...". And, I didn't want to be on the receiving end of the "or". This desire to appear perfect has gotten in my way more times than I can count! I'm slowly breaking that barrier down because I finally realize it's the only way I can achieve my full potential. Because the bottom line is we have a choice. We can continue to be stuck in our box and believe what we've learned, or we can blaze our own trail.

What is the difference between a success seeker and a failure avoider?

A success seeker will

• Espouse a Growth mindset
• Keep their eye to the future
• Be confident in their abilities to figure things out
• Embrace failure
• Love a good challenge
• Have an optimistic mindset, high levels of personal responsibility, self-efficacy
• Be unsatisfied with the status quo
• Focus on “what's the best that can happen?”

A failure avoider tends to

• Be in a Fixed mindset
• Keep their eye in the rear-view mirror of their life
• Worry about appearances
• Fear failure
• Take the path of least resistance
• Have a negative mindset
• Suffer from self-doubt, stress/anxiety, victim mentality
• Be routine driven
• Expect the worst out of most situations

Where You Fall and Why It's Important to Know

Now, let's see where you fall. Look at the statements below and rate yourself from 1 to 5, 1 being "not often at all" and 5 being "most often". It's not an exact science. There is no right or wrong. It is merely to gauge what your personal tendency is.

• I am more concerned about being judged than improving.
• I want to show and prove that I am smart and talented.
• I believe failure is a reflection of my identity.
• I do not regularly set goals for myself.
• I am hesitant in my ability to figure things out.
• I shy away from challenges.
• I hesitate to try new things.
• I have low levels of personal responsibility.
• I am motivated by extrinsic factors.
• I keep my eye in the rear-view mirror of my life.
• I worry about what people will think of me.
• I am afraid to fail.
• I tend to follow others.
• I often take the path of least resistance.
• I tend to have a negative mindset.
• I often experience self-doubt, stress/anxiety.
• I play the short game.
• I believe things are happening TO me not FOR me.
• Interruptions to my routine throw me off.
• I tend to go down the rabbit hole of worry.

Now, add up your score and if you scored at least a 70, you lean towards failure-avoiding behaviors.

Now you know where you stand! Having self-awareness is the beginning of the journey! The most important thing you can do now is not identify as a failure avoider. Do not take this label on as a part of your personality. There is a difference between saying "I am a failure avoider" and "I tend to embody the behaviors of someone who wants to avoid failure". Remember that this results is just is a point in time, based on what you were taught and what you've been through. The beauty is that now that you know where you fall, you can make the necessary adjustments to change your mindset.

Risks Associated with Failure Avoiding Behaviors

There are very real risks associated with failure avoiding behaviors.

The most obvious one is that you will never reach your full potential. You'll be stuck in the same spot for the rest of your life. You will not grow. You will not improve. You will not get better because you won't allow yourself to take chances. You're going to play small and set goals that are based on the desire to avoid failure, rather than on the desire to succeed. You'll reach a self-ascribed glass ceiling. Worse yet, you may actually start to believe that you are not capable of reaching bigger goals. This is a dangerous place to be.

You might also stick to something longer than necessary. When you want to avoid failing at all costs, it's difficult to walk away from a situation or a challenge that is seemingly "unwinnable". So, you hang in there for too long, wasting your time, efforts, and resources simply because you don't want to appear as a failure.

You'll experience more stress and anxiety. When we are stuck and unable to move forward, we get frustrated. The longer we remain frustrated, the more our stress and anxiety increases. By nature, we are driven by accomplishment, and we love success. So, when we avoid challenges to not appear like a failure, we don't make much progress, which leads to more stress.

You might get stuck in patterns. Think of overcoming challenges as building your skills toolbox. If you avoid taking on challenges, you'll have a limited toolbox. You might only have a hammer, so everything that comes your way will look like a nail. When you focus on seeking success, you open yourself up to new ideas, new points of views, and every time you succeed, you add a tool to your toolbox.

Breaking the Cycle

So, how do you break the cycle? It's not easy, but it is possible. It requires a change in mindset, a shift in focus from avoiding failure to seeking success, new success-focused behaviors and reaching for bigger and better goals.

The first step on this journey is accepting that this is where you are today and know it is only a diagnosis. Now that you're here, it's important to do some internal work and try to understand why you have such a dislike for failure. What are your triggers? What are the things that make you want to avoid failure? Once you know what they are, you can be better prepared to deal with them. I encourage you to journal and answer these questions:

• What was the first time you had a negative association with failure?
• What was the situation? Try to remember in detail
• Who put the idea in your head that this was a failure and not simply a healthy, normal part of learning?
• How does this person live their life?
• Is that a model you want to emulate?
• Are you repeating the same learned patterns?
• Are you your own person or a representation of THEIR limiting beliefs?

Now you get to decide. Do you want to build you own legacy or do you want to continue their limiting legacy?

You also need to reframe what failure means to you. Instead of looking at failure as doom and gloom, understand it's a healthy part of life. When you were a baby and were learning to walk, your parents didn't beat you down for not walking right away. It took trial and error. You failed time and time again. You fell, but you kept trying until you got the hang of it, AND you were celebrated when you succeeded! Somewhere along the way, people started passing judgment according to their own biases and what they learned when they were young. You can break that cycle.

Second, create a support system. When you're trying to reach for something new, it's helpful to have people who can encourage you and help keep you on track. Who in your circle can support you on this journey? Do you have a friend or family member who is positive, seeks out success and is not afraid to stumble? If not, find someone. Make new friends. Expand your circle and surround yourself with more people like that!

Third, start setting goals that are based on your desire to succeed, rather than avoiding failure. Make sure they are challenging, but achievable. This might feel uncomfortable at first. If it does, sit with the feeling and explore where it's coming from. Once you know, get to the root of the resistance, and put habits and behaviors in place to deal with it. The simple fact that it feels uncomfortable is a good indication that you might want to lean into it.

Fourth, celebrate your successes. Acknowledge them and enjoy them. When you do this, you'll be more likely to want to strive for more success. There is a secondary benefit to celebrating. It builds your self-confidence. You begin to believe you can figure things out. As you get more confident, you feel more competent, which in turns feeds your confidence. It's a virtuous cycle!

Fifth, keep practicing. The more you practice, the better you'll become at it and the easier it will get. Once you get a taste of success and begin to see failure not as a "death sentence", but as an exciting part of learning to be better and more successful, you'll be increasingly willing to take risks.

Finally, be patient. Just like how Rome wasn't built in a day, success doesn't come overnight. Be patient and keep working at it.

Final Words

Remember that abundance is all around us, and there is plenty of room for everyone to succeed. So don't be afraid to strive for abundance and success in your life. Just remember to stay positive, have a support system, and set goals that are based on success, not failure. And lastly, be patient and keep practicing.

So, are you a success seeker or a failure avoider? It's time to make a change so that you can reach your full potential. Change your mindset, change your behaviors.