i want you to imagine that you're writing your first book when you finally finish the first three chapters you're filled with excitement you send the manuscript off to a publisher and they reject it so you try another publisher and it's rejected again you try another rejected you reach out to 12 different publishers and all of them reject your manuscript do you think that it's at this point you might take it as a sign that maybe you're not destined to become an author maybe you're not as good as you thought you were and maybe you should
look to spend your time doing something else a lot of people would say yes because every rejection letter from a publisher is like another failure but if jk rowling decided that 12 failed attempts at finding a publisher to read her first three chapters of harry potter meant that she wasn't destined to be an author we wouldn't have the harry potter series and she would have never become the first female billionaire author so the message here is that failure is an inevitable part of success as jk rowling said it is impossible to live without failing at
something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all in which case you fail by default but the fact remains that many people have an irrational and a persistent fear of failure fun fact it's actually called a tychophobia and it's often the result of life experiences that cause a deep-rooted thought that the worst thing you can do is to fail and for others it doesn't have an identifiable source so in this video i'll share with you some of the most common reasons why you might fear failure why that fear
is trying to protect you and keep you safe and essential strategies to work through it so that it doesn't hold you back because if you don't address it it will sabotage your relationships your career progression and your happiness hi i'm chade zarai and i help professionals to hack their careers overcome their limiting beliefs and confidently create the extraordinary life they deserve so let's dive in and i'm going to start by talking a little about risks because the reason why so many people hold themselves back is because there is uncertainty around the outcome there is no
way of knowing whether you'll succeed so there is a risk of failure but the reality is very simple those who take risks are more successful it's actually a critical business skill and it's this situation of unknown or uncertainty that we inherently struggle with we find uncertainty stressful and because of this we actually want to avoid it we're wired this way why well it's to protect ourselves to keep us safe from the possibility of threat and by threat of course i mean the threat of failing when there is a chance that something won't work out it
keeps many people stuck stagnant paralyzed it prevents them from putting their hand up for new opportunities from trying new things taking on new roles experimenting and stepping outside of their comfort zone and the really interesting part is that often this fear of failure it isn't even about the failure part at all one main reason why many of us fear failure is because of the negative emotion that we've associated with failure the emotional pain that we think that we'll experience and it's often because of how we think others will view us their negative assessments of us
their judgments so we take this on ourselves and we try to avoid it it's almost like we experience the shame and humiliation just from thinking about failing and here's the thing social judgment can be a really powerful motivator because it's seen as a form of social rejection we know from neuroscience research using brain scans that social rejection and physical pain have the same underlying processing systems in the brain they hurt and when we're talking about emotional pain here we're talking about hurting our ego so where did your fear of failure actually come from well it's
most likely a result of the earliest experiences that you had in the first seven years of your life when you were forming your sense of self and based on the relationships that you had with your parents if you had parents who provided inconsistent reinforcement or who withheld love unless you reached a certain standard of performance you internalize the view that you're only as good as your performance and what you deliver so you develop a deep-rooted fear of failing because it has a direct impact on your sense of self-worth if you're a perfectionist you'd absolutely relate
to this because perfectionism and fear of failure are really closely linked so i always like to look at some of the psychology and the underlying reasons why we do certain things before we go into solution mode and there are three simple mindset shifts that i want to share when it comes to overcoming the fear of failure you might have first it's knowing that every risk has the potential of failure so we have to get used to it failure is a part of life by definition there's no way to guarantee that a risk will ever work
out we also know that no great success was ever achieved without failure that's how we've developed as humans that's how we discover new things in advance in science and technology our civilization is based on failure and importantly what has been learned from a failure it comes down to something called cognitive appraisal which is how you appraise or interpret a situation are you appraising it as a threat oh no i'm going to fail or as an opportunity this is an opportunity for growth regardless of the outcome if you're fearful of failure you'll often procrastinate from starting
and the real reason why we procrastinate isn't because we're lazy or we lack discipline it's actually because we are avoiding a negative emotion that we've associated with the task you avoid the possible pain the shame the guilt so take time to become aware of your inner voice and what you're telling yourself ask yourself what am i avoiding what emotion am i trying to escape from then ask do i need to be protected here how can i see this as an opportunity to grow then take tiny baby steps in the right direction this helps us to
desensitize ourselves to it it's based on cognitive behavioral therapy which suggests that when we fear something we avoid it but by gradually increasing exposure to the thing that you fear your brain and nervous system desensitizes and you eventually overcome the fear so this could be a useful place to start next you want to welcome it and take the emotion out of it for many people if they fail at something they internally attribute the failure they blame themselves they personalize and this is linked to having a strong inner critic they allow it to reinforce a belief
that they are somehow a failure that they are deficient that they're not enough they're inadequate and sometimes we build it up so much in our minds and give it more importance than it deserves we catastrophize and as i always say thoughts are not facts yet we treat them as though they are so we need to acknowledge that this fear is often created in our minds by our thoughts we fear what we don't know and then we allow it to strip us of our confidence and prevent us from taking actions that could actually help us succeed
a really important part here is self-compassion and acknowledging that we aren't perfect no one is normalizing vulnerability normalizing the sharing of stories when we messed up made a bad decision made a mistake this actually gives others the permission to do the same by opening our arms up to the possibility that things may not work out and it's okay if they don't but what did i learn from it we can start to address the subconscious fear of failure that we have by separating our sense of self-worth from the outcome and the third strategy is to take
enlightened risks so let's say you want to get physically fit what's one of the things that you do well you generally go to the gym or you work out right in the same way if you want to work towards overcoming a fear of failure sometimes it's really effective to actually strengthen your risk-taking muscle and put yourself in situation where there's uncertainty it's similar to some of the strategies to help you work through perfectionism maybe try go for a walk without a map or say yes to something before you feel ready now of course that doesn't
mean taking reckless risks just because you want to conquer your fear of failure i would give you a high five for the commitment but i wouldn't actually advise it instead i'd advise you to take what i call enlightened risks these are risks that you've thought through that are inspired by a larger vision that you have for yourself and your higher purpose ultimately these risks could take you closer to where you want to go so even if it doesn't work out you've learned something new you've gained a new skill or you know what not to do
next time look i'll be the first to admit that not all of the risks i've taken have worked out but i learned something from every single one of them when you can see each of your failures as actually a giant lesson in disguise it allows you to actually find power and strength from it so i hope this episode has helped change your mindset when it comes to embracing failure so much of the fear that you have is because of what you're telling yourself about yourself which means you can also change the narrative but you have
to first become aware of what's going on and then take steps to work through it thanks for tuning in to another episode i'm shades awry i'll see you next time you
