Everyone is afraid of failure, but for some, failure is akin to a pothole in the road (passed and forgotten), and for others, it is a tragedy on an ancient Greek scale. After a fiasco, such “tragics” experience strong disappointment, anger, regret, and shame for a very long time. Gradually, negative emotions develop into a fear of failure - atychiphobia. It is better to free yourself from an unpleasant phobia together with a specialist.
Reasons for fear of losing
A small child is not ashamed of mistakes. Kids fall, get up and willingly fall again. But as children get older, they begin to pay attention to the evaluations of others. “Public opinion” destroys the child’s inherent fearlessness. Getting up after “falling” in the eyes of others becomes increasingly difficult.
Critical parents and a school with overly strict teachers also create fears of failure.
The fear of not succeeding haunts perfectionist individuals who tend to look for mistakes in their own work and try to do everything “better than Steve Jobs.”
Stereotypic thinking is another typical cause of atychiphobia. After any failure, people who are prone to generalizations think that they are born “losers.” Such stereotypical conclusions drive a person into the dead end of atychiphobia.
What should I do if I can’t do anything?
So, what should you do if you also sincerely think that you can’t do anything? Do the same as my client:
- keyword therapy with this phrase;
- think, remember and choose your own working Eraser.
Besides, my client had homework. Remember her phrases during practice: “I am mediocrity” and “I am insignificant.” She worked on them later on her own using the same Key Word Therapy.
She still has a lot of work ahead to restore her self-esteem, self-worth, self-acceptance and self-love, relationship with her husband, and so on. But that will be a completely different story. Now she is actively mastering the method to resolve all these requests on her own. Therefore, I am sure that this will be a story with a happy continuation.
Signs of Fear of Failure
Individuals who are afraid of not succeeding doubt that they have good mental abilities. Atychiphobes love to measure their own IQ using “modern” tests several times a day. They are terribly afraid of disappointing those whose opinions are important to them. Therefore, they are told that “the chances of success are low.”
Individuals who are firmly held in their clutches by the fear of failure have a sea of “physical” and “mental” symptoms of phobia. When fear of failure sets in, they:
- the chest is compressed, the pulse is jumping, everything is spinning before the eyes;
- lips and hands are shaking;
- throws you into heat, then into cold;
- the stomach doesn't work well.
Due to the fear of failure, individuals feel completely confused and feel that the situation is in control of them, and not they are in control of the situation. Atychiphobes also engage in “self-sabotage” - they quit something halfway. It seems to them that it is better to go up the mountain and not go up than to end up giving birth to a mouse. This is why people with a fear of failure are inveterate “downshifters” whose career growth is blocked. For people who are perfectionists, self-sabotage is especially dangerous. It ends in a complete stupor of will, when a person, out of fear of “messing up,” refuses even basic things. Doesn’t brush his teeth - he’s afraid that he’ll “fail” and leave plaque on his teeth; does not relieve minor needs in public toilets - he is afraid that he will “miss.”
Fear of speaking in front of large audiences
The accepted name in psychology is glossophobia. Glossophobe is a person who is afraid of speaking in public. A very common fear, it ranks second after the fear of death. For many people, before going on stage, the body produces adrenaline in the same quantities as a skydiver before stepping into an open hatch.
Psychologists explain this phobia as childhood fears. Parents, when they are embarrassed that their child might say something stupid, demand that the child remain silent altogether in public. The fear is aggravated during school years, when you have to go to the blackboard and the child is afraid not so much of a bad grade as of the fact that his classmates will laugh at him.
How to overcome this fear?
You can imagine that it is not you who now has to go on stage and perform. You are an actor, making a movie, and you have the role of a cool speaker, a confident person who has done this many times and always successfully.
You can turn your speech into a discussion with the audience - if you do, you will divert attention from yourself to others.
It helps a lot if before your performance you rehearse your words and gestures in front of a mirror. Professional speakers do this and are not shy about it. They are embarrassed by something else - going on stage without preparation. This is unprofessional!
You can rehearse your performance in front of your family or friends.
Visualize your success in detail. Public applause.
Think in advance what questions might be asked and prepare your answers.
Imagine that there is a person in the audience who treats you very well, and speak for him. This will help.
How to overcome the fear of failure - practical advice
A little psychological “self-tuning” will help against the fear of failure.
We focus on what is in our control
For fear of failure to subside, we need to focus on what we can control. Let's remember the example of Nelson Mandela. The South African president and Nobel laureate in his youth dreamed of leading the country and defeating apartheid. But he “failed” and ended up behind bars. In prison, Mandela put the impossible out of his mind. The future Nobel laureate did what was in his power - he studied and sought to improve prison conditions. He focused on what he could control.
We constantly develop our competence
Many are familiar with the “imposter syndrome” - the feeling that we have studied and studied, but have not mastered the work we are doing. For people who fear failure, impostor syndrome is especially severe. This feeling of incompetence gives rise to procrastination - the desire to put off work until “after the rain on Thursday.”
To overcome impostor syndrome, let's use the example of one of the richest people on the planet, billionaire financier Warren Buffett. He is by no means lucky. Buffett is just damn competent because he is constantly learning. The financier is over 80, but out of habit he continues to swallow 500 pages a day of not tabloid reading.
“I read all the time, I think all the time. I have no fear of failure in business, because there won't be any. There is no place for impulsiveness in my business decisions - only experience, knowledge, calculation,” Buffett said in a recent interview with Time magazine. In general, we will constantly increase our capital of knowledge, expand our competence, and the fear of failure will melt like a jellyfish in the sun.
All or nothing - a false attitude
Many people suffer from tunnel thinking. Like a laser, they focus on only one single step to achieve some narrow goal. They tightly tie the goal to self-esteem. This is how the fear of losing is born. All or nothing - no achievement, no self-esteem. Zero sum game. If you lose, you lose everything. So why take the risk? “Isn’t it better to stand on the sidelines?” - the inner demon whispers to us. And we stand, becoming slaves to the fear of losing.
We should remember Thomas Edison, the creator of the light bulb. This guy was never afraid to lose. And Edison often failed. Often.
Once Thomas spent many years looking for a suitable material for the filament of a light bulb. I tried one and lost. If I used a different material, I ended up in a puddle again. Thomas tried hundreds, thousands of substances. Nothing worked all the time—the light bulb flatly refused to light.
If Edison had fear of failure, then, of course, sooner or later he would have given up. But the creator of electricity didn't care. Thomas kept trying. Finally, with 6234 material, Edison won - he finally found a suitable one. This victory completely compensated for all previous defeats.
Sometimes you can lose 6234 times and only win once to win. Just remember that this is not an all or nothing game. Edison once said that “no one explores the Grand Canyon by jumping off its cliff.” Every loss is not the end, but another small step towards victory.
Let's be kind to ourselves
And best of all, even affectionate ones. Often we want too much from ourselves, we reproach ourselves greatly for failures. This is how we develop a feeling of guilt, along with which comes the phobia of losing. Let's treat ourselves the way we treat a good friend, let's sympathize, sympathize with ourselves. Empathy needs to be directed not only at others, but also at our own Self. Once we learn to understand our own feelings, it will become much easier to endure failures.
We learn what we can’t do in order to accustom ourselves to failure.
This is a very simple way to combat the phobia of losing. Do we draw like a chicken with its paw? Do we only know a couple of swear words in English? Then it's time to start learning these unknown things. It’s not scary, it’s not offensive to make mistakes about something that is absolutely zero. By learning completely new things, we will gradually get used to failures and begin to accept them calmly.
Finding the origins of the fear of losing
Let's sit down, take a deep breath, and take a good look at our own past. When did the fear of failure appear, when did this misfortune happen to our psyche? If we begin to get to the bottom of the reasons, we will understand that the mind has distorted reality. We are not losers at all, but simply strict teachers or parents who have gotten it into our heads that giving bad grades, and indeed losing in general, is “impossible.” This was the beginning of our atychiphobia.
Breaking down a complex problem into simple subtasks
Are we afraid of failures, so we avoid difficult things? We want, for example, to create a website, but we feel that we cannot do it, it’s too complicated.
To make the fear go away, we break down the terrible task into “non-scary” components. We are not thinking about creating a website, but, for example, about:
- what domain name to come up with for him;
- where to buy hosting;
- what design to make.
We are not thinking about marriage, but about what dress is best to wear for our loved one’s birthday, what delicious dish to please him with. So we’ll gradually create a website, get married, and at the same time “outwit” the phobia.
Through thorns to the stars - it's about all of us
No one can reach the stars without encountering thorns. However, for some reason many people think that they can take the path of least resistance. But this road leads to hell, straight into the clutches of the fear of losing. You just need to understand that without defeats (a sea of defeats!) you can’t get any stars from the sky.
Failure is always temporary
When you lose, it seems like it's forever. But our feelings are deceiving - defeat is always temporary. Let's think like the National Basketball Association (NBA) players. There are approximately 100 games in this competition per season. 100 games in 365 miserable days! Even champion teams usually lose about a third of them! Failures are temporary - let's always remember that.
Fear of failure is a poisonous fruit of our mind
The fear of losing is just a thought. And thoughts are just a figment of the imagination, delusions. Let's stop being their slaves. Let's think about why we so blindly believe our thoughts, which tell fairy tales about our doom to failure in relationships, failure at work? Let's drive away ignorant thoughts with a filthy broom. And we will meet failures with bread and salt. Failures teach! They teach you to win.
Stop fighting fear - let's ignore it instead
Fear of failure is a part of us all. There is no need to fight him. You should learn to treat fear like the background noise of an air conditioner - not to pay any attention to it.
You're afraid of being cared for
Many people catch the virus of indifference. Nothing really inspires them. Such people do not dare to fully devote themselves to any business, project or goal. Many of them give up very quickly. Others simply lose interest. And many don’t even have the strength to start.
Chronic indifference is an insidious defense mechanism. It saps the motivation and inspiration you need to get rid of it. This is how a person ends up in a vicious circle.
On an unconscious level, many people are afraid to take on something with all their might because they understand that they may fail. This failure can trigger in them a flood of thoughts for which their psyche is not at all prepared: questions about their own worth, competence, the question of whether you are worthy of love, and so on.
Typically, people who use this mechanism get rid of it only when a new emotionally intense situation occurs in their life, which they manage to cope with.
Simple exercises against fear of failure
Some simple exercises can also help combat the fear of failure.
When the fear of losing sets in, let’s drive it away with deep breathing.
Making fear go away is not at all difficult. We proceed like this:
- Fear makes breathing quick and short. We return everything to normal with the help of deep, slow breaths.
- We slowly inhale oxygen through the nose for 5–10 seconds. We do this with the diaphragm, so that during inhalation and exhalation it is the abdominal cavity that moves, not the chest cavity.
- We also exhale carbon dioxide slowly through the nose. Let's exhale completely!
We repeat this simple exercise until the fear of failure is gone. This will happen quickly - in 5 minutes maximum.
Fear tenses your muscles. If you relax them, fear will instantly loosen its grip:
- alternately tense and relax different muscle groups;
- We start with the feet, then move higher - to the calves, thighs, stomach. We “go through” the whole body.
Trying to please everyone will make you lose your personality.
It is impossible to please everyone: even if someone thinks you are a wonderful person, there will always be someone who will think differently. And you can’t do anything about it: there are so many people, so many opinions.
A person who tries to please everyone will end up losing his personality because he will forget about his own needs and desires.
Of course, you need to try to live in harmony with everyone, but you shouldn’t stop being yourself. Psychologists say that you should always be honest with yourself: if you don’t like doing something, if you don’t agree with something, first of all admit it to yourself. You shouldn't follow the lead of others.
Trying to please everyone, you can lose your “I”
If a person tries with all his might to please others, then he becomes a kind of victim , since he is entirely dependent on the opinions of others. Parents, friends, colleagues will always try to impose their opinions on you. Trying to please everyone and not disappoint anyone, you will lose your “I”, your personality . Always ask yourself what you want, not what others want, and do as you see fit. Even if you make a mistake, it will be your mistake, not someone else's.
Accept the fact that you do not have to and are not obliged to have time to do everything at once!
The most paradoxical thing is that we impose such limits and standards on ourselves. In fact, our loved ones often want from us not a “should” with a perpetual motion machine instead of a wife and mother, but a calm and cozy relationship without tension and haste.
Can you afford to just laze around all weekend? Sit a little longer at breakfast, without rushing to clear the table, and dream over a cup of coffee. In the evening, turn off the plowing mode and just watch a stupid series (not useful for self-development) with the whole family.
Try to learn the art of idleness and doing nothing. Stop! Take a breath and give up on the unclean apartment, the lack of healthy vegetables in the refrigerator and just DO NOTHING. Like in childhood, remember? You could sit for hours on the river bank and watch the leaves and twigs float past.
