Discover the root of the fear. Reflect on why this fear shows up for you. Perhaps it was from a personal experience or things people have said to you throughout your life. Are you afraid of not being accepted by others? Of being fully seen? Of not being able to survive if you fail? Get to know this fear on a deeper level, without judgment.
The Fear of Failure is one of the most common restraints that holds people back from pursuing great ideas. Imagine if we could become totally free from the fear of failure. Imagine what we could then manifest and create. In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Becoming Free From the Fear of Failure.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Krystal Aranyani.
Krystal Aranyani is a Best Selling Author, Spiritual Teacher and Celebrity Hypnotherapist.
She has grown a large online following for her authenticity and sharing all parts of her journey openly with the intention to help others thorough their own struggles. After leaving a highly abusive relationship that almost took her life, she has traveled to over sixty countries alone over the past decade, exploring different spiritual and life paths. It is her mission to empower others by reminding them that they are limitless, Divine beings and can absolutely create the life of their wildest dreams.
She has a loyal online community of over 150, 000 spiritual seekers, a top podcast Real Talk with Krystal, two best selling books and over 10 million views on YouTube.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Thank you for having me! I have been a full time world traveler for the past twelve years with a mission to empower others and create as big of a wave of love in the collective as I possibly can. Originally from Canada, I left a highly abusive relationship at twenty-one and jumped on a one way flight to China. I’ve been traveling ever since. My career began by sharing my survival story and spiritual practices in women’s shelters, as I once lived in them myself. My mission has led me down many paths since. I currently work as an empowerment coach, author, motivational speaker and hypnotherapist.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I believe one of the most important moments of my career was when I realized I can be it all and I get to have it all. We are not often taught our true potential or worthiness growing up in today’s society. My journey began as a teacher of spirituality and yoga, and there was a lot of judgment in the spiritual community around worldly, material success. I renounced everything for many years; I took a vow of celibacy, stopped wearing makeup, sold all of my clothes, stopped brushing my hair and lived in ashrams. I wanted to be the best version of myself possible but living this way felt inauthentic. One day I walked into a women’s ceremony that was led by a radiant teacher whose presence alone gave me permission to be all that I desired to be. She was spiritual and adorned as a true Goddess. I realized that day that I could be spiritual, abundant, sensual, intellectual, wealthy, successful… and anything else I desire! I share this because it was such a pivotal moment in my career and life. From then on I began teaching tantra, which also puts an emphasis on the balance between the spiritual and material worlds. I now teach around wealth consciousness, reminding those in the spiritual community that they can be materially abundant, and guiding those who are already materially successful into a life of deeper spiritual fulfillment.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
1. Authenticity. I am very grateful to have a growing community across my social media platforms. The most common feedback I receive is that they have followed me because of my authenticity, realness and rawness. I believe society, and the internet especially, needs more authenticity. We need more people sharing their real life experiences, not just the highlight reels. In a world where connecting is so easily available at our fingertips, more disconnect is present than ever before. I believe showing up authentically is the key to healing this false separation. We are all in this together, I can’t say that to my community enough.
2. Confidence. I do something that scares me in my career every single day. Talking on camera does not feel natural to me but I do it every day. I am constantly breaking out of my comfort zone and I wouldn’t be able to without confidence. Confidence in myself, in my message and in my mission. I could not lead others if I didn’t deeply believe in what I am sharing with them. Confidence didn’t come to me from the start, it has been consciously developed over time.
3. Resilience. Failures are inevitable. Rejection is inevitable. Challenging times are inevitable. You must build resilience as a leader. You must learn to fail quickly. Allow yourself to be in it and to learn the lessons from it, then get up and move forward. We can’t take anything too seriously to too personally. It’s important to trust the process even when it doesn’t make sense to us at the time. We are never stuck in any position or circumstances, we are always learning and evolving if we allow ourselves to be.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the concept of becoming free from failure. Let’s zoom in a bit. From your experience, why exactly are people so afraid of failure? Why is failure so frightening to us?
Our fear of failure goes back to our need for survival as all of our fears do. I believe this is the root of anything that scares us. In modern day we don’t have constant threats to our lives as we once did, say in our cavemen days, so the mind comes up with all kinds of creative ways to sense danger. Failure can be perceived as an attack to our survival in many ways: We failed so we will not be accepted into the tribe, and we’ll die. We failed so we won’t be able to feed ourselves or give ourselves shelter, so we’ll die. There are many surface level reasons for this fear, but I do believe it comes down to survival.
What are the downsides of being afraid of failure? How can it limit people?
Fear of failure can limit us in so many ways. It can hold us back from truly going for the life that we want and our greatest dreams. This fear can guide us to settle in all areas of our lives and never experience our full potential. It can lead us to disconnect from our purpose, keep us playing small and hide or deny our unique talents and gifts that are meant to be shared with the world.
In contrast, can you help articulate a few ways how becoming free from the free of failure can help improve our lives?
When we become free from the fear of failure we give ourselves permission to be all that we came here to be, to chase after and conquer our dreams, and to choose the people, places and experiences most in alignment with our highest potential. Don’t we all want that? When we are living in fear and playing small we often settle for people, jobs and other circumstances that aren’t in alignment with our true selves. The thing with most fears is that we can’t actually make them disappear, so learning how to not allow the fear of failure to control your choices gives you confidence in many other areas of your life as well. You learn to recognize limiting thoughts and beliefs and not allow them to control your choices.
We would love to hear your story about your experience dealing with failure. Would you be able to share a story about that with us?
I recently experienced what felt like a big failure in my career, although I personally refuse to call it that. I prefer calling it an opportunity to learn and pivot. It was one of my greatest dreams to create a spiritual app for women and I invested a lot in every sense to make this happen for years, only to release the project due to not being able to find a reliable team to support the vision. After three years I felt the best (and also hardest) decision was to let it go completely.
How did you rebound and recover after that? What did you learn from this whole episode? What advice would you give to others based on that story?
I failed quickly. I felt like I had gone through an actual break up. I let myself feel it all for a few days. I sat with my heart, cried, and released the vision from a space of surrender and trust. As much as we’d like to control all outcomes, sometimes there’s a greater plan for us than what we may be able to see for ourselves. I deeply trust that. Once I released the project fully I opened space for inspiration to enter, and an idea for another exciting, more aligned project unexpectedly came through that same week. My advice is to honour your feelings and the lessons that come from the experience, then release it and trust that something even better will take its place. Learn to let go of outcomes and pivot in a new direction. Make it an exciting time to birth a new vision and open to new experiences!
Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that everyone can take to become free from the fear of failure”? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Discover the root of the fear. Reflect on why this fear shows up for you. Perhaps it was from a personal experience or things people have said to you throughout your life. Are you afraid of not being accepted by others? Of being fully seen? Of not being able to survive if you fail? Get to know this fear on a deeper level, without judgment.
- Become aware of when the fear arises. When does this feeling come up for you the most? Is it in certain environments or around specific people? Where do you feel it in your body? How would you describe the feeling? This step is simply becoming more aware of the existence of the fear.
- Honour the fear, but don’t allow it to control you. Now that you have become more acquainted with the fear, learn to welcome it when it is present, rather than trying to push it away. I don’t believe that being in battle with any part of ourselves is helpful. Send it love. It may sound silly but talk to it. Say something (either out loud or internally) like, “I feel you and know you are here, and it’s okay. I know you are here to protect me, but I got this. You don’t control my choices or the outcome. I am going to do it anyway.” You can play around with this and discover what works best for you.
- Become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Push through it anyway. Again, fears will likely always exist because they are meant to keep us alive. Growth is uncomfortable, if you want to succeed and evolve into your full potential, the journey will inevitably come with discomfort and growing pains. Expect this and keep pushing through.
- Repeat. This all takes practice to master. Know that you absolutely have the power to control and release fears when they arise. It will take practice, but each time you stretch outside of your comfort zone and just go for the thing, it gets easier. The incredible feeling afterwards can also become addicting! It is true that the greatest liberation is on the other side of your fears. When I have fears come up, I close my eyes and remember the unstoppable feeling I experienced the last time I didn’t allow it to control me.
The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.” Based on your experience, have you found this quote to be true? What do you think Aristotle really meant?
I feel this quote can be interpreted in many ways. What first comes to mind for me is that we can fail in so many ways, but when we learn from these failures we succeed. In this way we aren’t actually failing, as long as we are learning, which is the one way to succeed. A failure is always an opportunity for growth, if you view it in this way then you can never truly lose. Honestly, if everything went our way all of the time, how interesting would life be? It’s the detours along the way that allow us to grow and discover our true potential.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The movement I would most like to inspire, and am working every day to do this, is the self love revolution. I believe that if every person in the world could sit in a room alone with themselves and feel nothing but love and acceptance in that space, it would create the greatest impact on humanity and our environment. Our inner world reflects our outer world. What happens individually is felt in the collective, and vice versa. A lot of the suffering on our planet is due to unresolved trauma and pain found within. We are so distracted from ourselves in today’s world that we forget to create the space to love ourselves and be present. The love we have for ourselves reflects out into every single area of our lives.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
I would love to have lunch with Marianne Williamson and believe one day our paths will cross! She has been a great inspiration in my life from a young age, on many levels; spiritually, mentally, professionally and politically. I believe if women like her were brought into positions of power the world would know peace, compassion and unity.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook as @krystalaranyani. I have a weekly podcast called Real Talk with Krystal, and my books are on Amazon. My website with all of the latest updates is krystalaranyani.com.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
I’m so honored to contribute and really hope this helps empower others to push through their fears and claim their dreams!