Suddenly the room falls silent and all you can hear is your heartbeat.
You’re in a workshop, eager to learn, but the second the instructor opens the floor for questions, hesitation creeps in.
You want to speak up, but you don’t.
I’m not immune to this struggle myself. During a recent eight-week course, I waited six weeks before finally raising my hand for some in-the-room coaching (a key reason I signed up in the first place).
Despite knowing how valuable the opportunity was, fear held me back. I was terrified of saying something ‘wrong’ or exposing that I didn’t fully grasp the material.
When I finally spoke up, I felt something shift. Not in a big, dramatic way, but more like a quiet realization: the fear I had been avoiding wasn’t something to run from, but something to reframe. It was a signal that I was stepping into a space where real growth happens.
As a teacher, I make it a priority to create low-stakes environments where mistakes are expected, even encouraged. I tell my participants, ‘This is your time to practice. Fail as much as you can. The next 90 minutes are for trying, experimenting, making mistakes, and learning.’
But there’s a reason why embracing that mindset isn’t always easy for us.
Designed to fail
Our conditioned fear of public failure robs us of real learning.
I grew up in a traditional Western education system (The Netherlands) where the fear of getting it wrong was drilled into us. Teachers would ask questions, expecting the 'right' answer, and if you didn’t have it, the whole class would stare.
Even when I raised my hand out of genuine curiosity, one ‘dumb’ question was enough to effectively make me stop trying ever again. The awkward silence, the side glances from classmates, and the teacher's failed attempt to hide their confusion—my palms are sweaty even thinking about it now.
This kind of classroom embarrassment conditioned me and many of my classmates to avoid risks entirely. Instead, we fell in line, going through the motions, regurgitating safe, expected answers just to stay under the radar.
Looking back, I realize the whole setup wasn’t really designed for learning—it was built to avoid mistakes at all costs, forgetting that experimentation and ‘getting it wrong’ is a critical part of learning.
“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” — Confucius
This conditioning follows us into adulthood. Every time we step into a classroom, virtual course, workshop, or corporate training, that voice from our youth still whispers: ‘Don’t fail, don’t try unless you’re certain, and whatever you do, don’t risk looking foolish.’
And it kills real learning.
Failure means progress
But here’s the good news:
Real progress kicks in when you stop treating failure like something to dodge and start seeing it as essential.
This is more than just a shift in mindset—it’s a breakthrough.
I didn’t discover this until later in life, when I began learning on my own terms. But once I made that shift, it felt like a door opened, and I unlocked a new level of growth. Speaking up in group discussions, reaching out to people, asking more questions—risks I would’ve shied away from before—they all became part of my learning process.
I see the same transformation happen in my own workshops all the time.
I can always sense it when it happens; there’s a noticeable shift in the room. It’s the moment when people stop worrying about getting it wrong and begin to focus on trying, experimenting, and immersing themselves in the material—typically after a few brave souls have taken the leap first.
The atmosphere changes: spontaneous questions emerge, encouragement flows, and discussions unfold effortlessly.
It’s a common trait among the most effective learning environments that failure is reframed as progress.
I discovered this firsthand back when I practiced Tai Chi: learning never ends, it’s continuous progress. Every time you think you’ve mastered something, another layer reveals itself, pushing you to refine even further.
At first, this might feel overwhelming and even disappointing. But you quickly learn it’s also freeing. When you accept that growth is a continuous process, not a final destination, you can let go of the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ and see it as the next stepping stone. I know that sounds pretty cliché, but that’s probably because it’s true.
Just like in Tai Chi, every situation, every stumble offers a chance to grow and improve. Imagine walking into a workshop—or even a casual conversation—eager to embrace trial and error.
This approach would instantly shatter the classroom conditioning holding you back from unlocking your full learning potential.
Failure as fuel
“Don't try to get it right. There's no problem with messing stuff up. You're just doing experiments to learn. Everything is an iteration.” — Joe Hudson
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the real key to learning is not avoiding getting it wrong, but embracing ‘failure’ as a natural and essential part of the process.
The following six ideas have helped me reframe failure into a powerful learning accelerant rather than a roadblock:
1) Shift your mindset: The next time you step into a learning environment—whether it’s a workshop, class, or course—set the intention to iterate, knowing that missteps are part of the process. Remind yourself, ‘Today, I’m here to experiment and learn.’ It might feel counterintuitive, but this mindset reduces pressure and opens the door to deeper learning. In practice this often means being the first to raise your hand as well…
2) Seek feedback early and often: Feedback is one of the fastest ways to grow, though it often feels daunting. It gets easier to share the more often you do it though. The more you do it, the less intimidating it becomes. I know this firsthand from both learning to coach and learning to write, that (asking for) feedback is essential. In no time, you’ll even enjoy it.
3) Treat teachers as guides, not authorities: They’re guides, not gurus. Take what they offer, but make it your own. Go about it like Bruce Lee, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is essentially your own.” Empower yourself and take back your inherent learning authority.
4) Experiment constantly: Treat everything as an experiment. Whether you’re practicing a skill or working on a project, it’s not about getting it right the first time, or the second time. The more you approach learning as a series of small experiments, the more quickly you’ll improve.
5) Fear is here to stay: Reframing failure as fuel isn’t a simple switch you can flip, it’s an ongoing process. It won’t eliminate the fear you feel the next time you consider raising your hand again. Embracing that some fear will always be part of the process, even seeing it as a trailhead, can help you navigate it more smoothly when it arises.
6) You’re not in this alone: Seek out environments where feedback and experimentation are baked into the process. Surround yourself with peers who are also learning, failing, and iterating alongside you. Whether it’s in a cohort-based course, a coaching group, or even just a few friends tackling a project together, find a space where failure is not just tolerated, but celebrated.
The goal isn’t to get things right, it’s to get things rolling. It’s about fully engaging in the learning process, testing things out, and learning from every iteration.
When you become comfortable with this approach, you’ll see that failure isn’t the enemy of progress—it’s the foundation of it.
…packing it in here today Rik…lots of good advice but as a accidental occasional musician the experiment often hit me as an outlier…finding wrong notes can be just as important as playing the right ones…and feedback might be the only way to know which is which…
it’s funny how incessant the fear response is such that I need to hear this message over and over and over again to stay even marginally ahead of it. So thanks for bringing the subject to your newsletter today. someone I’ve been coaching for a while with public speaking expressed their success in this respect in such a beautiful way. They recently sent a note to me saying “now I am ready to fail at a moment’s notice.” I love that way of looking at the useful process of failure and I’m now aspiring to that goal, worded in my mind in just that way