How reading “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel helped me overcome my fear of failure
Brian Zhang 👻
Ghostwriter for music founders and CEOS on LinkedIn Sharing my journey with depression, burnout and anxiety to help 230+ musicians build mental fitness and resilience
Fear is the one obstacle that stops many of us from achieving our potential. We tend to only look at the risks involved with chasing our dreams. But what if we started looking at the luck involved? Here’s how reading “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel helped me overcome my fear of failure
The fear of failure is still the greatest obstacle as to why so many of us get stuck in life and never truly reach our potential.
I am certain that at some point in your life in the last year, you’ve thought about starting your own business, starting a passion project or changing jobs into a field that you genuinely enjoy. I’ve bet you’ve gone online and watched hundreds of motivational videos from celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, preaching the idea of embracing failure. Maybe you’ve even enrolled for some personal growth courses online to learn skills to help you start your dream.
Yet, despite drowning yourself in a pool of books, podcasts, and networks, you still haven’t made that first step because the thought of failing frightens the living daylights out of you.
Now, if you’re expecting me to tell you to stop being lazy and get to work, then you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m actually here to tell you, it’s okay, because I know exactly how you feel. For the past 8 years, I’ve been procrastinating and putting off many passion projects of mine because I’ve been crippled by the fear of failure.
Here’s a shortlist of goals I wanted to aim towards achieving after I graduated high school in 2015:
8 years later, here’s an update on how I’m tracking with these goals:
Between January 2016- December 2023 I uploaded 40 videos which is an average of 5 videos a year I didn’t open my first music school till 2022 (that’s a story in itself) I haven’t released a single let alone album on Spotify Between January 2016- December 2023 I sent 22 newsletters which is an average of 2.75 newsletter a year I’ve recorded one podcast episode which has yet to be released During this time, I wasn’t necessarily struggling as I was teaching guitar full time in Sydney. Life was actually okay as I had 40 students a week and I was completely independent which allowed me to save a decent amount of money. My schedule was mostly in my control and the best part of the job was building strong relationships with my students and their families.
You could probably guess that despite the stability of my job, the rate of growth was seriously slow and non-existent.
Teaching 40 students a week meant I had very little time and energy to work on other projects. This was further compounded by the fact that I was driving to my students, and unlike most teachers in Sydney, I was willing to travel out of my local area on a regular basis. My whole day would be centered around writing content for my lessons, before heading out, and coming home late in the evening.
Every year I would put off making any changes as I was so afraid of risking what I had.
What if I lose all my students because they rather stick with the same formula? What if people don’t like my new project and it is lamented by the masses? What if my new business fails, I can’t fall onto plan B, and I lose everything?
Ultimately, I ended up going nowhere as I fell into the old trap of “paralysis by analysis”.
The main issue I had was that I was too focused on the risk involved with chasing my goals.
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We talk about the risks involved in pretty much every facet of our lives whether it’d be the risks involved with starting a new business, going into a new relationship, or buying a new car. In my case, I laid out the risks involved with expanding my business online and opening up a physical music studio. These risks included the costs involved with building both a website and finding a property, the time it would take to get both aspects up and running, and the potential impact it would have on my mental health.
The more I analyzed the risks, the less motivated I was to actually get started.
However, when I came across a book called “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel, I started thinking about the potential luck involved with my projects, rather than the risk involved. In the book, Morgan talks about how — “Luck and risk are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort. They are so similar that you can’t believe in one without equally respecting the other”.
After reading this book and specifically Morgan’s views on luck vs risk, I was reminded of the best piece of advice my best friend gave me many years ago — “Worry about what you can control, and not what you can’t control”.
No matter how prepared you are or how many contingency plans or back-up plans you create, there will always be some level of risk involved. You could create the most immovable and failsafe system for your business, and the level of risk and luck are the same. We just tend to look at risk, because as humans, we are more sensitive to negative because of our natural survival instincts.
The most important thing to remember this is that risk is something you cannot fully control as it happens in the future.
When I realised this, I knew that the chances of me failing or succeeding were equal and those were two things out of my control. What I can control is educating myself on the necessary skills required to run a music school and run a good online business. What I can control is creating a set of values and principles that truly reflect who I am, what I stand for and my purpose in life.
The outside noise can be quite brutal as every day we are told by our fellow peers, friends, family, and mentors what not to do.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to take the safer route and work a mundane 9–5 pm job that pays well. Just reading the plethora of horror stories of people who fail in business is enough to make someone go insane. Given the fast-paced and unpredictable nature of today’s economy, market, and financial crisis, the idea of a boring 9–5pm job that brings you 10 years of security is ironically quite enticing.
However, I believe you create your own luck just as you create your own risk in this world.
I am grateful that I live in a country and era where you can lose your job, or fail at your first business, and still find opportunities to quickly get your life back on track. Whilst college and university are still viable ways to enter the workplace, you can educate yourself online for a fraction of the price, and fast track your career by building an online portfolio. You can go from close to being broke, to creating several revenue streams by using the endless pool of resources available on the internet.
Ultimately, the idea of viewing luck on the same level of risk allowed me to gain a sense of relief and peace of mind.
The anxiety of risk didn’t necessarily go away, but this way of thinking was the kick I needed to get started. Rather than being afraid of the risk involved, I looked at the potential lessons I could learn from those risks. So, in January 2023, I finally opened up my first music school, knowing that I could do incredibly well or crash and burn at the same time.