The Most Dangerous Failure Is Playing It Safe

In this episode, Kim Bolourtchi gets real about the fear of failure as she launches her most personal project yet. You’ll see why shrinking to avoid failure is just a slow-motion collapse—and how flipping failure into feedback is the only way to set yourself free. 

If you’re ready to stop buffering, go all in, and smash the rules holding you back, this one’s for you. Plus: your Unruly Move of the week.

Curious what unwelcome rule is running your leadership? Take the 90 second quiz

Save the date: Kim's upcoming book, Strategic Unruliness™ , launches October 21st!!! Get on the launch list

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Transcript

Kim Bolourtchi: 0:00

Kim, you're listening to get unruly, where we smash the rules that keep leaders stuck and build what's next with clarity and confidence. I'm Kim bolourchi. Let's get unruly. All right, let's get into it today. We're talking about a rule that has been running way too many lives, and I've been staring it down myself these past few weeks. It's this failure should be avoided at all costs. Now it sounds smart, right? I mean, who wants to fail, but when you buy into this rule, it does something sneaky. It keeps you from ever going all in. So my book strategic unruliness is about to launch. And listen, I have been freaking out. Not nervous, butterflies freaking out. I'm talking 3am wide awake, stomach and knots, sweating through my clothes, kind of fear, because this isn't just a project. This book is me. It's the realest thing I've ever put into the world. And what I'm realizing, as I'm really stressing out about it, is that failing when you only halfway show up is not really as scary you can tell yourself. Well, I didn't, I didn't really go all in, right? That kind of failure will sting, but you can buffer it. You can kind of protect your ego if it doesn't go the way you want it to, by sort of saying, I didn't give it everything. There were still parts of me that I held back, but failing when you put it all out there and there's no buffer, no softer version of yourself to hide behind. Well, that's terrifying, and that's kind of what I'm confronting right now. And I'll be honest with you, my brain is doing to me what happens to everyone in this situation, which is, it tries to bargain with you. It says, just shrink, just a little. Play it safe, right? Like, don't risk the pain if this flops or if this doesn't go well, and that's what this rule does. It tells us that if we avoid failing, that we will be protected, right? So if we don't ever put ourselves in a position where we could fail in a big way, we will be safe. That is the rule. But the truth is that shrinking is just a slow motion kind of failure. And I really want to let that sink in for a second, because I feel like maybe you felt this too before a big presentation or a pitch, a conversation, you knew that could change everything for you. You have this thought it creeps in. If I give it everything and it fails, then I have failed me. So you pull back, you stay at 70 or 80% right? You sand the ideas down so your your boldest ideas are not quite as bold. I know I've done it, you've probably done it, but the truth is, it's not safety that's just shrinking to not risk something bad happening. Here's the truth, the one I know, the one I teach, the one I'm practicing in real time right now. Failure is not a verdict. It does not define your worth. It does not mean you're not capable. Instead of thinking, failure is the worst thing in the world, and we should avoid it at all costs. We need to think of failure as information, and that's it. It tells you what's working. It tells you what isn't, what needs to shift, what needs to be redirected. We're the ones who make it mean more than it does, which means we can also choose to make it mean less, and that shift from failure is the end to failure is feedback. That's where freedom lives. Because here's the deal, if you live by the rule that failure should be avoided, you will never go all in, you'll always shrink, you'll always buffer, and that guarantees failure by definition. But when you're willing to risk failing spectacularly. That's the only way you give yourself a shot at succeeding spectacularly, and that is literally the whole point, to show up so fully that, yes, you might fail, but you also give yourself the chance to change everything. And my argument to you is that it's worth sweating in the middle of the night. It's worth being nervous. It's worth putting yourself out there for the possibility that you get to do the thing in the biggest way possible that you're really meant to do. So here's your unruly move this week, I want you to ask yourself, how. Where am I holding back right now because I'm trying to avoid failure. Write it down, be so freaking real about it, and then reframe it. Call it what it is, information you haven't gotten yet. And ask, what would it be like to strip away the buffer and go all in anyway? Thanks for listening to get unruly. If this hit home, it would mean the world if you left a quick review. It helps other bold leaders find the show. And if you want to go deeper, you'll find two links in the show notes, the radical clarity quiz to uncover the unwelcome rule running your leadership and early access to my book, strategic unruliness out October 21 that's where I take this work even further until next time. Stay unruly. This has been, get unruly, stay bold. Stay clear. And above all, stay unruly.