The Story You Tell Yourself About Failure Is Keeping You Stuck

You're Not Being Careful: You're Being Scared

I was sitting in a coffee shop last week, eavesdropping on a conversation at the next table.

A woman was telling her friend about a job opportunity she'd heard about. Perfect role, great company, exactly what she'd been looking for.

"But I probably won't get it," she said. "They'll want someone with more experience. I'll just embarrass myself in the interview. What if I freeze up? What if they ask about that gap in my resume?"

Her friend tried to encourage her, but she had a negative answer for everything. By the end of the conversation, she'd convinced herself not to even apply.

I wanted to shake her and say, "You're not predicting the future - you're writing a horror story about it."

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

We all do this.

We create elaborate narratives about what failure will look like, feel like, and mean about us as people.

But here's what I've learned from studying how our minds work: most of these stories aren't based on reality.

They're based on something psychologists call cognitive distortions - systematic ways our brains trick us into seeing things that aren't there.

Dr. Aaron Beck, who pioneered cognitive behavioral therapy, identified dozens of these mental traps.

The ones that keep us playing small usually follow the same pattern: we catastrophize the consequences, minimize our abilities, and treat our anxious thoughts as facts.

I caught myself doing this just last week. I'd been invited to speak at a local event, and instead of feeling excited, I immediately started writing the disaster story.

"What if I forget what to say? What if people think I'm boring? What if someone asks a question I can't answer? They'll realize I'm a fraud. Everyone will leave. I'll never get invited anywhere again."

Notice how quickly I went from "What if I mess up?" to "My entire reputation will be ruined forever"?

That's catastrophizing in action.

The Fortune Teller's Fallacy

One of the most common distortions is what therapists call "fortune telling” - acting like we can predict exactly how things will go wrong.

We rehearse failure scenarios in our heads until they feel inevitable. We practice rejection so many times mentally that we start believing it's already happened.

Research from Stanford University shows that when we vividly imagine negative outcomes, our brains react as if those outcomes are more likely to occur.

We're literally scaring ourselves out of trying.

I think about that woman in the coffee shop.

She didn't know she wouldn't get the job. She didn't know she'd freeze up. She didn't know they'd judge her resume gap harshly.

She knew none of these things.

But she told herself she did.

The All-or-Nothing Trap

Another story we tell ourselves is that failure means total disaster.

We think in extremes: either we succeed perfectly, or we're complete failures. Either we get exactly what we want, or we've wasted our time entirely.

But life doesn't work in extremes. Most outcomes fall somewhere in the messy middle.

Maybe you don't get that job, but the interview practice prepares you for the one you do get.

Maybe your project doesn't go perfectly, but you learn something valuable for next time.

Maybe you don't achieve your original goal, but you discover something even better along the way.

I used to think this way about writing. Either my articles would go viral and change people's lives, or they would be complete failures. There was no in-between in my mind.

It took me months to realize that an article could be helpful to only one person and still be worth writing.

That practice itself had value, regardless of the outcome.

The Evidence Against Your Story

Here's what I want you to try: think about a time you were convinced something would go badly, but it turned out okay.

Maybe it was a presentation you were dreading, a difficult conversation you were avoiding, or a risk you were scared to take.

What actually happened? How did reality compare to the story you'd told yourself?

Most of us have plenty of evidence that our disaster predictions don't come true. But we ignore this evidence because it doesn't fit the narrative our anxious minds prefer.

There's a psychological principle called confirmation bias - we notice information that supports what we already believe and ignore information that contradicts it.

When we're afraid of failing, we collect evidence for why we'll fail and dismiss evidence for why we might succeed.

Rewriting Your Story

The good news is that stories can be rewritten.

Start by catching yourself in the act of fortune telling. When you notice your mind jumping to the worst-case scenario, pause and ask yourself: "Is this what I know will happen, or is this what I'm afraid might happen?"

Then try writing a different story. Not a fake, overly positive one, but a realistic one that includes multiple possible outcomes.

Instead of "I'll definitely mess this up and everyone will think I'm incompetent," try "I might make some mistakes, and that's normal. I might also surprise myself with how well I do. Either way, I'll learn something."

Instead of "If this doesn't work out perfectly, I'm a failure," try "If this doesn't work out the way I hope, I'll figure out what to do next."

The Plot Twist

Here's the plot twist I never saw coming: the stories we tell ourselves about failure often become more painful than actual failure ever could be.

The woman in the coffee shop suffered through an entire job rejection that never even happened. She experienced all the disappointment, embarrassment, and frustration of failing, without giving herself the chance to succeed.

We torture ourselves with imaginary disasters while missing out on real opportunities.

Your fear of failure isn't protecting you from pain. It's creating pain where none needs to exist.

What story have you been telling yourself that's keeping you stuck? What would happen if you rewrote it?