How to overcome Fear of Failure

In this blog, let us explore and learn something about "Fear".

Pondering questions like:
What is fear?
What do we fear?
What is a failure?
Why do we fear failure?
may yield some ideas that, to me are very interesting.

I am neither a psychologist nor a philosopher, but what I found is when we think and ruminate on issue such as above, we get surprisingly interesting hypotheses...and may be some practical conclusions based of the introspection. Being objective, logical and looking an issue from different perspectives could yield a lot of further insight.

Fear is defined in the dictionary.com as a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. One of the keys in that definition is "real" or "imagined". There are a few studies that indicated that the 85% of the fear events we worry about never come true....

Now coming to defining failure, I am not going to quote from dictionary, but use a simple definition we all know. Failure is a state not been able to attaining the goal we have set our ourselves, however small it is. If I set a goal saying "wake up early in the morning at 5:00 am" everyday, and if I wake up at 5:15 am, then it is a failure....hence, certain failures are trivial and certain failures are high impact and deeply affecting.

That said, let us get back to the core theme, we are exploring.

While I was hearing NPR recently in US, there was a discussion on the fears of Americans. Can you guess?? Alright, alright, you may not have guessed it!! They fear "public speaking" followed by "death"......how unexpected?

I fear a lot of things. Amongst which, death is something which is pre-ordained. Since, with the occurrence of death, I don't exist, let us not explore fear of "death' any further........

I believe, any other fear can be overcome. I have successfully conquered "public speaking" fear recently.....This fear has stopped me from achieving my passion of being able to influence wide audience, in the past. There were times when, I my knees were week and butterflies in the stomach, the moment I saw a group of people and my lips would dry up. It was an awful feeling. I was repeatedly making fool of myself through gaffes. I could hear disparaging smiles in the audience....Can any experience, so awful?

I contended there were two reasons :
1. There was tremendous "self-consciousness" when I stood before them...mostly related to how I appeared and how I sound. What they would think of me? Do I sound stupid? Will they find faults with me?
2. I am not very confident of the subject I was dealing with.

The first reason is debilitating are related the the "self-image" I was carrying. The focus and attention is all on what other people would think and perceive about me : my looks, intelligence, knowledge etc., so worried about their judgment of me rather than my own "comfort" of doing a specific task and enjoy doing it.

Thinking of the second reason, if I were to stand before a naive audience, I have observed, I could do much better than that of an erudite audience. It made me conclude that, the more knowledge and deeper understanding I have on the subject I was articulating, lesser the fear. I also found that Knowledge is the antidote of fear. I come from and IT background. I found my My confidence levels higher when addressing IT departments when compared to functional departments. I could relate better to a CIO rather than an CFO.

So, what are some of the things we need to overcome a certain fear? These are some steps I could think of :
1. Identify what we get frightened with
2. Think about why we fear it? What are the conseuences of having that fear.
3. Willingness to conquer that fear?
4. Courage to fail several times conquering the that fear

I can vouch that conquering a fear gives you enormous joy and a sense of achievement.

I will stop this blog for the time being, but revisit this this theme a little later..... Not only will I discuss and explore many broad questions related to fear and failure, but also I will share with you my personal experiences that have helped me tremendously facing C-level Executives...in my profession. Thanks to a group of 35 friends who helped me reinforce belief in myself....

Criticism - a god's gift?

One of the challenges in our lives is to handle criticism. I have scuttled a lot of actions and decisions for the fear of drawing criticism from friends and family. Some of them I regret to this day. In the retrospect, I should acted more assertively and have made those painful decisions for my own sake. I believe "handling criticism" is an essential life skill that every one needs to learn. For, we all, at one time or the other, will be criticized for any action or decision we may take or do. It is, indeed painful to know that others misunderstand us or use less than flattering words about us or even disapprove our actions.

So, why would it hurt, should someone doesn't approve of our actions or decisions? I think, it is because of two reasons :
1. We give the others so much power to hurt us
2. We are unsure about ourselves.

I believe that anything that is said about us that goes against our own "self-image" is not taken well by us. Hence, how should we handle criticism and Feedback?

Let us also be cognizant that all major religions of the world beseech, "Know thyself"; implying our ultimate goal is to find-out what we are all about : Our weaknesses, strengths, values and beliefs.

The approaches to the self should be built on solid foundation of
1. Self- Introspection
2. Self-awareness and Conciousness
3. Receiveing Criticism
4. Seeking Feedback

Even a thief, a cheat, a murderer thinks that he is good and all the problems lie outside of himself......his family, community, world at large. We often see people blaming everything in sight. Hence, we are generally, insensitive to our own "contribution" to the overall situation.

Self-Introspection....as suggested by Mahatma Gandhi is a prerequisite in building our character. It is a foundation of "self-knowledge". But it is only limited because, we can potentially only know a little of a bigger picture of "ourselves". Hence, there needs to be a mechanism to gauge our actions not just with our own perspective and wisdom alone.

I came across a very good tool called Johari Window. This tool captures what others know about us as well as what we know about ourselves. When I did this excercise a few years ago, I realized how much I didn't know about myself that others knew.

Then there is a tough nut called "Criticism".

It comes in two flavors : From Within and one from outside.

The one that happens within needs to be answered by all means. We need to stay clear with our own conscience. I suggest, even if you commit a bad act ( what society believes that act to be), do it with conviction and be answerable to your self!! That means, your thought, talk and action are in harmony. The problem araises if these three are misaligned and a feeling of guilt festers in our heart. So, we should first, be answerable for ourselves before we answer anyone else in the world. Simple, huh?

We are often traumatized by what others think of us. Of all the above, being criticized is the most difficult to handle. Following are some of my thoughts on how to handle them ( and as suggested in my earlier blogs, "self-talk"):

I consider this a boon.... The giver can have two intensions : Our well being or to hurt us......In the case of his intent to hurt, we will have to consider and intropect and "self" criticize ourselves to see if there is truth in what is said. If there is, we put a change plan around the aspect that is been come to the fore....Hey, here is now we are one weakness less!! He is actually, helped us :-). So his purpose to hurt us is completely defeated!! If it is critique, it is anyway, meant to help us become better person.

Feedback is what you get either you have sought or unsolicited.....Since we have asked for it, it is our responsibility to take it seriously are improve upon!!

So much for a simple matter of "Criticism" :-)