Towards the end of the year, I start panicking about all the things I had promised myself I’d do but haven’t even started.

This isn’t a one-time thing. It happens every year.

In January, I’ll have these grand plans about all the projects I’m going to finish, the book I’m going to write, the instrument I’m going to learn, and the languages I’ll speak – I begin to feel excited and content about all the wonderful things the future me has achieved.

But by the time September rolls around I haven’t done any of them.Why?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (after all it’s been happening for years) and I think it has something to do with confidence vs courage.

When I was young my parent’s number one goal was for me to be a confident person.

On face value this makes sense.

I think, if you ask most parents they would say they want their children to be confident, rather than the quiet loner with no friends.

Confidence is attractive – like a magnetic force – we enjoy being around them.

Usually, they appear to have great careers, an extensive network of friends and a “successful” life.

Confident people are the ones you want to be friends with.

But if you think about it, confidence is something you have to develop over time.

As you gain more experience and develop more skills, you become more confident in your abilities. You start to experience success, and as a result, you dedicate more time to doing the things you’re good at, and you gain even more confidence.

It’s a positive feedback loop.

But when we don’t feel confident, in our abilities, skills, or appearance (you can fill in the blank here) we put things off.

We don’t write a book, start a business or go to the gym. Instead, we wait for another day when we might feel more confident.

But the harsh truth is: that day never comes.

Because what you really need when you start something new is courage.

Courage comes before confidence, and it always has.

Babies don’t think to themselves “I don’t have the confidence to try that walking thing today, I’ll just wait until tomorrow – I might feel more confident then”.

They have no concept of confidence. Instead, they have this innate courage.

One day they stand up and take one wobbly step after another and then they’re walking. They walk again and again until it becomes second nature and throughout that time their confidence grows.

So to begin something new we don’t need confidence, we need courage.

Unfortunately, as we get older the amount of “new” experiences we have reduces, and we tend to have confidence in the things we do regularly since we’ve had plenty of experience doing them. So our courage muscle doesn’t really get flexed that much.

The good news is that unlike confidence with its prerequisites of experience, certainty and validation – courage doesn’t ask for anything.

And the greatest secret about courage is that it’s already inside us.

I can hear it. It’s saying, “Use me”.

Now it’s probably a little bit dusty from sitting on the shelf unused, but it’s still there.

However, for me, and presumably for others, there’s more lurking behind this curtain of courage.

The fear of failure.

Failing is uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable can be physically and emotionally painful, so we don’t want to experience it – in fact, most of us go out of our way to avoid it.

The concept of failure isn’t just attributed to a discrete event, it can become tied to our identity, our sense of self.

So when we say, “I’m afraid to fail”, what we actually mean is, “I’m afraid that I’m a failure”, and perhaps more importantly to some, “I’m afraid that everybody else will think I’m a failure”.

So now even the premise of failure can make us feel ashamed.

And perhaps, somewhat unconsciously, our brain decides that we should avoid failure at all costs.

I was reading this great book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck – she’s a psychologist and researcher at Stanford University.

She says there are two types of mindset – fixed and growth.

In the fixed mindset, we avoid failure as a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.

“I don’t want to write a book because what if it’s bad? And then by association, I’ll be a terrible writer and of course everybody will think I’m a bad writer and therefore talentless”.

To be fair, the first draft will probably be shit (thanks, Hemingway) because writing is hard and it takes deliberate practice, research, time and effort to write something interesting. How am I doing?

But what’s interesting is that in a growth mindset people redefine both failure and success.

They focus on the process rather than the outcome.

This reminds me of something Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx said about her childhood. She remembers he father asking:

“Sara, what have you failed at this week?”

He was redefining failing.

She goes on to say that failure became not trying.

So when we limit ourselves to not-failing, when we decide not to start a business, write a book or simply go to the gym, we cut ourselves off from learning, creativity and innovation.

If we agree that failure is a necessary (but somewhat uncomfortable) step in the process of achieving new things and that failure is not a reflection of us as a person, because let’s be honest 99% of people aren’t thinking about your version of failing, they’re too busy worrying about their own. Then how do we develop the courage to fail?

To be honest, that’s another post and this one’s already long enough, but I think it’s about starting small. Focusing on the process. Writing one word and then the next.

Until next time.