On Tuesday, April 6th I’m running a Live Video Webinar:
To find out more and register, click here
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Fear of failure: a common chronic disease that can paralyse entrepreneurs, aspiring sports champions and professionals alike.
Interestingly, fear of success can have a similar if not greater effect. I’ll talk about that in another post.
Back to fear of failure: why do people have it?
The first reason is negative outdated conditioning of the mind. New expectations or goals combined with old contradictory programming. Like a new computer programme running on old outdated software: it’s bound to crash!
The other reason is people suffering from fear of failure have not yet learned and internalised how to powerfully set up, run and manage a project from beginning to end.
They have not applied proper thought to all the controllables, all the variables, the external circumstances, their skill set, the resources, the risks and the expectations. The project has no greater context within which it lives and has not been mindfully planned.
As the old adage goes: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. The 5 P’s.
The first problem is a right brain (creative brain) problem; the second a left brain (analytical brain) problem.
And both brains are not working efficiently together. There’s a gap, a discrepancy.
And that is where fear of failure finds its place. In this gap. And along with it comes its big pal: doubt!
Together, they spread to other projects and areas of life! And if you’ve been there, you will know that they have the potential to spread like wildfire! 
Are you following me so far?
And so, rather than focusing our energy on carrying out the appropriate proactive actions as part of a well thought-out plan, we get stopped, confusion sets in, we procrastinate and all we think about is the result, or more likely: the lack of it.
When this happens, the gap gets even wider and fear occupies even more mind space. Like a Japanese knotweed or a Russian vine spreading in a garden, out of control.
It’s a desperate situation! Like a poorly attended garden, a poorly attended mind is a haven for negativity.
So what can you do to reduce the fear?
Here are a few simple steps that will get you pointed in a better direction. It won’t solve all your problems but it’s a simple starting point to put things back in the right perspective.
Firstly recognise fully that it’s your lack of “gardening and good husbandry” that is the cause of the problem. Stop blaming the weeds. Stop blaming the “weather”. Stop blaming yourself. Stop blaming! Take full responsibility for your lot. And forgive yourself if needed.
Start seeking deeper understanding of how to better utilise the incredible bio-computer that is your mind. A good book for this is Ron Holland’s latest best seller “The Eureka Enigma”.
Next, read and act on Shad Helmstetter’s classic book: “What to say when you talk to yourself” and learn to hear the noise in your mind and get a grip on it. Do the exercises in the book.
Thirdly, divide your life into key areas such as: business, sports, relationship, family, travel. Write these on a piece of paper.
Now look at each area and evaluate how well you are doing on a scale of 1 to 10.
Be honest with yourself but not overly critical.
This will give you your True North Evaluation, as John Assaraf calls it. That’s your new starting point. Do not judge the scores. Instead use them like a navigator uses his bearings. You cannot effectively move towards a new goal unless you know exactly where you’re at. Again, do forgive yourself if you are feeling guilt, pressure or disappointment.
So is fear of failure real?
To those who suffer from it, it certainly feels real.
But remember: in all matters there is Cause and Effect. Action and Result.
Better, wiser actions lead to increased results, and to more desired effects.
A powerful, orderly mind enables better, wiser actions.
Take on the mindset that there is no failure. There is only feedback!
Those who are committed to the path of continual growth and improvement will easily understand this: fear of failure is a perception, not a reality. It’s a symptom, not a cause. Fix the cause, and you reduce or eliminate the symptom!
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This is a phrase that my ju-jitsu instructor used a lot. And he was right!
Anyone who has reached a respectable level of skill in their art, sport or profession knows that repetition is the mother of learning!
A Premier League striker does not get good by just kicking a ball a few times. He practises the shot hundreds of times per day and well before the match!
In class, we practised a lock, throw or strike many hundreds of times too. The instructor knew that without massive repetition, we would not internalise, refine, fully understand and instinctively own the moves. Our old ineffective ways would still reign and his teaching would have been pretty much wasted.
It was no secret that those who got really good practised outside of class too. And practised a lot!
Boring I hear you say?
This type of seemingly endless repetition can indeed seem boring, especially to beginners.
Stage 1 is to get past the boredom factor. For some, holding onto a vision such as getting as good as Bruce Lee for example, is enough to get them through. For others it just won’t work. And that is why there is discipline and an instructor, the ‘Sensei”, who’s in charge.
Did you know that the Chinese word “kung fu” does not actually mean martial art?
It means, and I translate this loosely, “time and energy applied until one reaches mastery”. (“Wu shu” is used to describe martial art)
For example, one could possess good “kung fu” in cookery.
So my question to you this week is: are you putting in the time, energy and repetition necessary to master the key behaviours in your trade? Are you “paying your dues”? Has repetition become the mother of your learning?
Or are you perhaps still sometimes blaming external factors when you don’t quite achieve desired outcomes?
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With the New Year now upon us, many of us will have made New Year resolutions. And for good reason: we are not entirely happy with how it went last year.
Be it that our jeans have strangely become too tight, or our bank account somehow has not expanded, or our new business didn’t reach the targets that we so diligently set… the list goes on.
So we seek fresh hope. (Hope: the tip of the iceberg of despair!). And what better time than the New Year to create it?
But will it work? Did it ever work? Does anyone ever realise their New Year’s resolution?
It’s no secret: a few do… but most don’t!
Think back to the resolution you made last year: if it survived past Valentine’s Day and didn’t get forgotten, scrapped, downscaled or replaced, then you are in the minority. If it actually survived past February and you reached it or got any measured result then congratulations to you! No need to read further: just reset some new ones.
If not, then perhaps you would like to know a few reasons why your resolution never really had a chance anyway.
The 3 main reasons are this:
1. Most resolutions, good intentions, goals and plans are formed in the conscious mind. This is the part of you that thinks and reasons; yet it’s the non-conscious mind that causes our thoughts, behaviours and actions. It controls 96-98% of perceptions and behaviour. It’s our conditioning, from childhood until now.
Our hidden self-image resides here. The non-conscious mind looks for patterns and images in our outside world that match our inside “reality”. Information that doesn’t match up gets dropped. And that is the principal reason why New Year’s resolutions die a death; they are simply not in harmony with the inner conditioned non-conscious mind.
Until the non-conscious mind is updated and “reprogrammed” and both minds are singing from the same song-sheet, I’m afraid the resolution does not stand a chance.
It’s like the captain of a ship sending the command to steer towards port, yet all the crew, mechanics and sailors are fixed on starboard. 50 of them against 1 of him! In essence a mutiny. They reject his instruction and leadership. And this is similar to what is happening in our mind. A shift in consciousness is needed. Albert Einstein said: “a problem cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.
2. Most resolutions are a reaction to something that we do not want. The simple law here is “what we resist persists”. For some, avoiding the problem (fat, broke, alone, second place, etc) even becomes an obsession!
3. Most resolutions employ the strategy of “trying harder”. “This year it’ll be different: I’ll work much harder at it!” Ever heard someone say that?
Trying harder is like a fly desperately trying to fly its way through the window pane. It’s a strategy that unfortunately will not only kill the fly’s chances of reaching the outdoors, but it will kill the fly too! Yet only a few meters away there’s a door it could so easily fly through. Trying harder is not always the best strategy for success!
Does any of this resonate?
If so, here are 3 simple strategies that I invite you to take on:
1. Forget about resolutions. Get serious about expanding your understanding and capacity of how visions and goals are properly accomplished, from beginning to end. Find a good role-model or mentor whose “past is your future” and who can show you the precise step by step processes, help elevate your awareness and consciousness, steer you when necessary and hold you to account over time.
2. Change your thinking from moving away from a problem (ie: “I don’t want to be overweight”) to moving towards a principle (ie: the principle of optimum vitality) and get busy learning about the principle, embracing it and taking the step by step actions in order to actualise it into your life.
Time is going by anyway. It’s up to you what you do with it. Time doesn’t care if you don’t meet your goals or don’t accomplish your desires. It’s up to you to get the understanding and apply it. Chance is it was unfortunately not taught to you at school, university or in business. Better now than never!
3. Focus initially on the doing of the actions in the correct sequence and invest your energy in improving your performance, wisdom and skills rather than on the results. Take it step by step and celebrate the small victories of achieving the steps. Your results will improve accordingly in time. Succeeding in small steps and learning from them will make you feel good about yourself. People who feel good about themselves produce better results.
Do track the results, though, so as to keep you moving in the right direction. Adopt an attitude of “continual learning and progression” rather than success or failure. Get better at playing the game of actualising visions and goals rather than continually measuring your self-worth against the score board.
Wishing you success in this New Year!
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To know our true self, we must cease to identify with the illusory identity which feels seperate from the whole under the survival instincts fed by the ego.
For the real to come, the false must leave…
(Zen koan)
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The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!
Take 30 seconds to answer the following 4 questions:
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Our agitated mind too often prevents us from realising our true potential.
But rather than calming the agitation, when life gets tough, we tend to turn even more towards external circumstance and put yet more energy into that circumstance, hoping it will change, hoping we will find a way. Does this sound familiar?
What do I mean by agitation?
Imagine a pearl diver. His/her job is to find pearls in the sea (oysters first of course)
But because the sea is very agitated, visibility is poor and he cannot find any oysters. So what does he do, he pops his head above water and deals with what he can see: the other pearl divers and so he gets involved and wrapped up in conversations with them, judgements about them and dramas involving them.
All the while, he is reducing his chance of finding pearls.
Now of course a pearl diver cannot calm down the choppy seas; but using the image of the sea as a metaphor for our mind activity and thoughts, the good news is we can calm down the activity and produce clarity and stillness in our mind. It is not so hard to do. So, rather than agitation being the default starting place for our mind, stillness and clarity become the starting point. And from there, pretty much any state of mind is readily available, on demand.
And when the mind is still and clear, we can more easily perceive the greatness and gifts within us. We find our pearls. We no longer become so distracted by our circumstances and no longer need external validation for our existence, because we clearly see and realise that the most precious gifts are already within us.
Learn to still the mind!
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At a sales training class I attended last week, the instructor said: “slow down to speed up the sale”.
I noticed the look of confusion on some people’s faces…
I however was very pleased to hear this. It instantly reminded me of what Lao-Tzu taught: “The Heavy is the Root of the Light, Stillness the Master of Activity”.
And also what Indira Ghandi said: “We Must Learn to Be Still in the Midst of Activity And to Be Vibrantly Alive in Repose. ”
Something to reflect upon…
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Following the succesful release of his book, an American Indian Elder was interviewed on TV.
The TV reporter expressed how impressed he was with the Elders story and asked him how he managed to reach such a high level of wisdom and overcome his inner obstacles.
Here’s the elders reply:
“It’s quite simple really. This is how I see it: inside of me there are two dogs. A good dog that wants nothing but what’s positive and wholesome for me and a bad one that wants nothing but harm. And the bad dog always wants to fight and destroy the good dog” 
“That’s great” said the presenter. “Such a simple yet profound explanation of the conflict within us.
But I have one more question: which of the two dogs wins?”
The Elder replied:
“The one that I feed the most!”
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Stress is good for you!?
I often hear people say “stress is good for you. It stretches you and helps you get more done, helps you win…”
Have you ever heard that?
Let me tell you: stress is never good for you! I stress: never!
Tension however can be very useful and is sometimes critical to success.
Take the case of a tightrope walker for instance. The right amount of tension in the rope, not too little, not too much, is paramount. The rope walker will know exactly the right amount needed and will set the rope accordingly.
So what is stress?
Stress is when there is too much tension, to the degree that the integrity of the rope (or the act) is compromised and the rope breaks or distorts.
Likewise excessive tension (stress) in our lives leads to ill health, reduced vitality, poor relationships and general misery. Excessive tension in a business leads to inefficiency, drain of resources, high turnover of people, low morale, exhausted leaders, compromising of bottom line results, and so on..
So how much tension is good then?
I call it “Dynamic Tension”. It is the optimal amount of tension for a given situation to thrive. And this varies from individual to individual and situation to situation. The key is to find the right level of tension for you relative to your situation at a given time for sustained optimal performance.
Some roles and situations call for low tension, for example in the case of the general duties of a librarian. High tension here will disturb the studious environment. Other roles and situations call for high tension, such as an infantryman in a siege. Low tension could cost him his life prematurely and reduce his platoon’s strength.
Learn to discover your optimum level of tension that will enable you to produce best sustainable results. You will find that there is a range that you work best within. This range is Dynamic Tension. Once you’ve found it and understand it, then learn to expand it. This will prepare you for future growth and for downturns such as the economic one many are currently facing.
So in summary, we can avoid stress by planning properly to operate within Dynamic Tension. If however we find ourselves beyond that range, then we can avoid the harms of stress by either finding a way to reduce the tension to a level that still supports us(sometimes removing oneself from the situation may be required) or by expanding ones capacity to deal with excessive tension increasing ones resilience. This comes from good training coupled with experience.
Stress is neither good for you or your business!
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