Compounding Daily

EP140 — Fear of Failure: Good or Bad

• Miguel Sanchez

Share episode

Lets us know your thoughts thru TEXT!

Fear of Failure: Why It Shows Up When Goals Get Real

Fear of failure often emerges when our goals begin to take shape—when dreams start to feel attainable and the stakes suddenly become real. It disguises itself as certainty about worst-case outcomes and convinces us that hesitation equals safety. Yet moving forward isn’t about pretending the fear disappears; it’s about learning to act in spite of it.

Fear is frequently a signal of incomplete knowledge, not a verdict on your potential. The antidote is a balance of curiosity and action—study enough to understand the landscape, then take small, consistent steps that build genuine confidence through experience.

This conversation explores the quiet cost of playing it safe, the weight of future regret, and the subtle ways judgment—both our own and others’—can hold us back from meaningful work.

For anyone who has felt caught between big ambitions and a relentless inner critic, this episode offers a path forward: gratitude to stay grounded, knowledge to gain clarity, and steady movement to create momentum. Standards rise, fear evolves, but the agreement remains the same—face it, learn from it, and use it.

Tune in, take one deliberate action today, follow the show, share it with someone who could use the encouragement, and leave a review so others can discover these ideas.

Enjoy, and as always, thank you for listening


Thank You for listening ! follow us on Instagram.
@compoundingdailypodcast
Miguel:@m_sanchezvillafane
Email: Compoundingdailypodcast@gmail.com

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, hello, and welcome back everybody to Compounding Daily. I'm your host, Miguel Sanchez, and welcome back to another episode. This is now episode 140. And first and foremost, I always begin with expressing gratitude. Thank you for being here. If there's anything that I value most in life, is my time, and I respect my own time, but more so I respect the time of others. So for you to choose to spend time listening to me rant about something small or something significant, honestly, most things that I consider valuable in my life with the hopes that it provides you with value is something that I don't take for granted. So thank you for being here, and let's get right into it. Yes, it's Monday morning, the beginning of a brand new week, and as always, I emphasize on the fact that it doesn't matter what the weather is, it doesn't matter what's going on around you. What matters most is that you make sure that before you step out into your home, before you just go out and experience the world, make sure that the conversation internally that is happening within you is one that I believe should always begin with gratitude towards the things that you do have. So you can mentally fortify yourself and go out into the world. And as you begin to work towards the things that you want, because it's easy, right? It's easy to wake up on a Monday and say, Man, I don't want to go to work. I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to go through these emotions. I don't want to go to that environment. I don't want to talk about these things. And because of circumstances, you might just not have a choice that you do have to go and do those things. And it's easy to allow those things to become like weights on your shoulders, weighing you down. And before you know it, it's a beginning of a brand new week. And here you are soaking and feeling sorry for yourself instead of um approaching the week with a positive attitude and a good conversation and making sure that the people who come across your path are impacted in a positive way, not just being bombarded by negative energy that you could be emitting because you are lacking an observation of a good conversation within yourself, you know. Um yeah, so happy Monday. Be mindful of that and and go out into the world and try your best. It's the best that you can do, right? And with that being said, uh a short topic today, obviously a solo episode. I have not uh been um what's the word that I'm looking for? I have not at the moment been actively looking to get people on the podcast. I have people who have been asking, be patient with me. Um as I'm going through some changes in my life at the moment, I am uh purposely allowing myself time alone to think, and I I get myself into pensive states, and in these pensive states I make plans and then I start working on the plans, and before you know it, a few weeks went by. Uh but I don't want to I don't want you to think that this is now a a Miguel podcast only. Uh, there's a bunch of people I want to talk to, so many great people in my life that I want to share their story through here. And I just at the moment it's not something I'm prioritizing. But what I've been enjoying most, honestly, I've been saying now for a few years that if there's anything that I've gotten good at is having a conversation with myself about myself and the things that are happening around me. And it's a conversation that I now value immensely because it's the things that had allowed me to grow, and now I get to sit here and that share that conversation with you because that's what this is, right? A reminder not just to myself, but to you, my friends, the listeners, the people of the community, and um but the goal is for you to come out of it out of this conversation happening with myself by myself, and getting some form of value where you can now think and reflect and maybe be a little bit more curious as to what things can change in your life that will lead you to a better route. And it's different when you add another person into the room because now the conversation isn't internalized, and sometimes you don't have the time to think, you just uh start reacting to the conversation happening in front of you. Uh, not that that's a bad thing either. But lately I find myself thriving in what what in what I once feared immensely, which is sitting alone in a room and having a conversation with myself, with nobody around, and just talking about the things that I considered are maybe valuable to people. You know, uh I remember almost three years ago now, which is insane to think about that you know, the idea of pressing record on my own, uh, let alone uh without something prescripted or you know, maybe something that I was already planning ahead of time. Like I literally just now sit down, record, and allow my mind to just speak what it has, and uh we go from there. And the reason I'm emphasizing on that is because today's topic is fear, and not just fear specifically, but the fear of failure. Um, I want to speak about the fear and failure and what it means to me. And I'm sure what I'm going to say is not gonna be profound. I'm sure what I'm going to say is probably something we've all heard before, but uh maybe the words in which I'm using or the story in which I'm describing or the pictures that I'm trying to paint will impact you a little bit different than somebody just saying, Well, the fear of failure is holding you back, man. We all know that, right? We all know that internally, the conversation happening within ourselves, there is something that we want to achieve, there is a character that we want to become, there are things that we want to experience, and for some reason, when we allow our our imagination to start painting these pictures, it feels good to imagine what we could accomplish and what we could become. But for some reason, when we start having the conversation of like, well, what what do you think is is required of me to get there? What do you think is life is gonna ask from me? Well, it's probably gonna ask you to do something extremely hard, it's gonna ask you to challenge yourself, it's gonna ask you to put you in uncomfortable places, and it's easy from that conversation to all of a sudden start seeing how things may be difficult, how things may be uncomfortable, how you may fail here, and how you may look like an idiot here, and how people are going to judge you there, and before you know it, what was once an exciting thought about a possibility of your future has now become a fear of ever achieving it because of the things that is gonna be required for from you along the way, and I hope that that makes sense, right? Because the fear of failure comes in the form of a negative conversation, a conversation with the self that doesn't allow you to see the outcome in a positive light, right? Because you could have the fear of failure, or you can have the sight of positivity, right? And what I mean by that is you can fear an outcome or you can share the perspective of well, what if it works out for me? What if the these fears that I'm holding are only challenges that are meant to serve as obstacles to teach me what I'm supposed to learn along the way. You understand what I mean? That's a change of perspective, that's a different conversation. So it's easy that to allow the fear of failure to turn into anxiety, right? Uh, fear often turns into hesitation and procrastination and avoidance because the way that you are approaching it, approaching life is what I'm referring to, is from a position of like, man, I really want, but I'm so scared of the possibility of never achieving. And um, I can relate a lot to that, right? I'm a human being, I have lots of fears, and it's easy to to allow those fears to make our choices irrational, or allow those fears to make our decisions so safe that we never amount to anything. And that's when I gotta start having these conversations that always come up with these crazy questions. And my question to myself for a very long time was like, Man, if you fear failing, imagine what happens when you don't try at all. Imagine what you will be at the end of your life if the fear of failure kept you at bay, if it kept you comfortable. What would you feel? What would you say to the people who are in your life? Because you never took that leap of faith, because you allowed fear to not just weigh you down, but become a permanent anchor, not allowing you to progress into what you know very well could have been anything you ever wanted to be. That's a conversation that to me inspires action, inspires change because uh allow so you know, I I've told myself so many times in the last seven years, man, dude, I'm scared. I'm scared, and as I'm saying those things, I'm doing the very things that I'm scared that I'm talking about. Does that make sense? Just because you feel scared doesn't mean that you don't have to take action, that you can't take action. Uh, you are a human being, you don't remove fear out of your heart. You understand that it's there and understand that it's there for a reason, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a fear of failure. It could just be a fear of the uncomfortable. Uh, one of the best advice that I ever got uh from one of the books that I'm that I read and I'm actually currently reading, uh he says that the fear of failure is for most people just a lack of knowledge, right? Uh the fear of failure can be uh misinterpreted as man, that's gonna suck for me, that's gonna be worse worst scenario, worst possible outcome for me. I don't want to go that route. But what if you just give enough time into dedicating it into gathering information? What if what you fear is the unknown? You fear something because you don't understand it, so the more you try to understand it, the less you'll fear it. When I when I read that for the first time, it felt like a slap to my face because it just told me that I'm lazy and I'm not doing enough homework to get enough knowledge. Because the more knowledge you got towards something, the more confidence you gain towards it, and therefore as you move in that direction, the fear of failure is not as present because you are confident in the knowledge that you have acquired. Right? I don't think I'm saying anything that's crazy, but the reason I'm sharing this is because fear limits growth. It trapped me in my comfort comfortable zone for a very long time. I believe my fear of judgment and my fear of failure and my fear of being ridiculed prevented me from a very long time to reaching the potential that now sits here and talks to you. I believe the fears I currently hold as this version of myself are things that I must face in order to get to the next level of myself. And when I get to that level, it's gonna come with a different set of fears. But the difference between who I used to be and who I am now is the understanding that I no longer avoid fears, I now try to understand them. And in trying to understand them, I learn about myself, I learned why I avoid certain things, I learn why I tend to fear certain things, and I learn from my own experience that avoidance of fear doesn't do anything for you in regards to getting better or approaching a better direction. But instead, understanding that fear is just part of life and you can use it as a stepping stone, then all of a sudden you are not limited, all of a sudden you are not uh uh being prevented from discovering your best self, not because fear is now absent, but because you are using it as a sign that you can become better. That is really what I have to say today. In my own personal life, I'm going through a lot of personal changes, personal changes that I plan on talking about real soon, um, most likely with a guest, because those are the best conversations. Uh, it's almost like a venting session. Um But uh it's the the fear of failure is very adamant in my life at the moment. I I've allowed myself to share my journey with everybody, and as I share my journey, I I keep setting my expectations of myself higher. And um as the years progress as time passes by, that conversation within myself is always urging me to to challenge myself, to to do more, uh to learn something new, to step into new environments, to to change the idea of who I want to be and start refining it. So I'm always a constant work in progress. And through the whole thing, I'm always fearful of looking stupid in front of others. Believe me, as I speak, as I write my captions on my Instagram post, as I record my morning messages, as I sit here right now, there's always that little bit of fear in me that says, Man, dude, you probably sound like a dumbass. Uh, who's really reading your things? No, nobody's gaining value, and that conversation is happening internally. But here's the thing Do I allow that fear to allow me to never speak again because I fear it, or I keep within my mind that conversation that says you allowed fear to keep you comfortable, you allowed fear to not allow you to take a risk, and because you allowed fear to dominate your life, you now sit here old, near death, full of regret, wondering what could have been simply because fear controlled your life. What will you do with your fear? Will you use it or will it be the reason that you pull up excuses? That is up to you for decide. That is all that is on my mind today. So thank you for listening. I hope you gain value from it. As always, I'm an open book. Reach to me on Compounding Daily Podcast on Instagram. Uh, you can message me on my personal page on Instagram. It's I'm an open book. I love conversations. I I I welcome a a challenge in perspective. Um, and and I I don't gain anything from this. I don't ask uh anything of you, but if you are listening and you've made it this far, then all I ask for you is to not just listen and put away, but listen and think about your own life and think about the fears in your own personal life. And as you listen to the other episodes, understand that I'm talking to you sure because you're listening to this, but I'm talking to myself, right? So I know that this conversation is one that you can sit with yourself, reflect about your life, and maybe allow your thoughts to start giving you a sense of purpose, a sense of direction. So you're not just only existing, but you are living with intention because that doesn't happen until you give it to yourself. So allow fear to dominate your life or start taking control and working like you deserve the best out of life because I believe that we all do. So with that being said, thank you for being here and until next time.

Head Shot

Miguel Sanchez

Host