How do you get more comfortable with failing?

Most adults have arranged their lives, quite sensibly, so that they rarely fail at anything. We do the jobs we know, cook the dishes we can cook and play the sports we already play. The side effect is that when failure does arrive, it feels enormous, because we are out of practice.

Fail small, on purpose

The most reliable way to get used to something is to meet it often at a manageable size. With failure, that means picking things where getting it wrong is likely, visible and cheap:

• Try a recipe with one technique you have never done.
• Order in a language you are learning, even if it comes out sideways.
• Go to a class where everyone else seems to know the steps.
• Enter a pub quiz in a subject you know nothing about.

None of these matter much, which is the point. You are rehearsing the feeling of not getting it right and discovering, repeatedly, that nothing terrible follows.

Count attempts, not just wins

If the only thing that counts is success, every failed attempt is a loss. Change the scoreboard. Keep a tally of attempts: pitches sent, routes tried at the wall, loaves baked, conversations started in Italian. The number goes up whether or not each one worked, and it is a far better measure of what you are building.

This changes what you hope for when you set off. The aim of today's attempt becomes "do one" rather than "nail it", and doing one is almost always possible.

Give each miss a short debrief

After something goes wrong, three questions are plenty:

1. What happened, in plain words?
2. What was in my control?
3. What will I try differently next time?

Then stop. The debrief is a few lines, not a trial. The useful part of a failure is usually one small lesson; the rest is just noise, and replaying it adds nothing. If an awkward moment keeps coming back uninvited, we have some thoughts on filing it and moving on.

Separate the attempt from the person

"The bread didn't rise" and "I'm hopeless" are very different sentences. The first is information you can do something about. The second is a judgement that leads nowhere. When you catch yourself jumping from one to the other, rewrite it back into the first kind.

Notice what you avoid

It can help to make a short list of the things you quietly steer around because you might be bad at them: the karaoke night, the beginners' tennis session, asking a question in a meeting where everyone seems to know the answer. You don't need to tackle them all. Just pick one each month and treat it as practice. The list itself is useful, because it shows how much the fear of failing has been deciding for you.

Spend time with people who fail cheerfully

Beginners' groups, amateur sports clubs and community classes are full of people who are bad at things and having a lovely time. Being around that is contagious. You notice that the person who falls off the paddleboard laughs and climbs back on, and nobody thinks less of them. Often they think more.

Expect the feeling to fade slowly

Comfort here is gradual. The first few deliberate failures will feel as uncomfortable as ever. Somewhere around the tenth, the sting is shorter. That is the change you are after: not never minding, but recovering faster and trying again sooner.