How to overcome your fear of failure

[Teacher]

Adapted from Martin Seligman's How to Learn Optimism and Mark Goulston's Mental Traps at Work.

Fear of failure is often an obstacle to career or business development. What is it about defeat that scares people so much? Dissatisfaction? Humiliation? A blow to self-confidence? Or is it just an inability to withstand the blow of fate? Renowned psychiatrist and FBI agent trainer Mark Goulston answers all these questions.

In his bestseller, Mental Traps at Work, Mark Goulston gives an example. The father of his friend Stephen Sample, president of the University of Southern California, worked for the same company, and there was a major reshuffle and everyone except him was taken away. “My father told me,” Stephen explained, “that the worst thing that happened to him in his entire career is that he was not fired then along with everyone else. The rest grew and developed in new places in new companies, and my father was stuck at one point. His professional growth slowed down, and as a result, he was never as satisfied with his career as before. He wanted me not to repeat his mistakes. "The sample remembered for the rest of his life the advice he once heard from his father: defeat can also have a positive side.

It is important to change your attitude towards possible failure and learn to understand that failure can be an impetus for success in your future activities.

How to overcome fear of failure?

Mark Goulston offers a step-by-step plan.

Step 1.
When you're afraid to take on a job, ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen if I fail?" Then ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen if I don't even try?" Compare the answers. You will understand how true the saying "People regret not done more than done" is true.

Step 2.
The next time you fail, tell yourself (and say as often as you see fit), “Let a little time pass. Don't do anything that could make the situation worse. "This approach will prevent you from slipping into defeatist behavior, which will only add shame to your problems and distract from the lesson you can learn from the situation.

Step 3.
Resist the temptation to blame others for your failure, to berate yourself, or to try to find an excuse.

Step 4.
Find someone to support you. Ask: "Have you ever done anything so stupid that it is difficult for yourself to admit it?" or: "Have you ever got down to business, being completely confident in success, and as a result fail with a crash?" Then get ready - in return, you will receive a powerful charge of empathy and most likely - a strengthening of the relationship.

An interesting observation was outlined in his book by Mark Goulston: it is not the fear of failure that stops us, but the fear that we will be unable to cope with what follows. How not to give up too early?

How not to give up too early?

Why are we giving up too early? The reason is what renowned psychologist Martin Seligman called "learned helplessness." Learned helplessness is a refusal reaction, a withdrawal into passivity, which originates in the belief that any of our actions has no meaning.

When a person sees the futility of his efforts for some time, then sooner or later he ceases to hope that he can change something. And, as a result, he does nothing even when the situation changes for the better and his actions can already influence something. This is how we learn to be helpless.

But, having learned helplessness, is it possible to get rid of it? Seligman conducted his experiments on dogs and found out that it is possible. He writes that in the course of the experiment, he began to force dogs, taught to be helpless, to take actions that give results. At first they did not give in. However, finding in the end that their actions were not in vain, the dogs again began to act independently. Their healing was one hundred percent reliable and lasting.

Then Seligman began to work on preventive methods and discovered a phenomenon he called immunization: training in advance that the way of responding to a situation is an effective preventive measure against learned helplessness. He found that dogs that had similar experiences as puppies acquired lifelong immunity against learned helplessness.

After seven years of experimentation, Seligman realized that resilience in the face of failure is not an innate trait, it can be developed. Seligman's book, How to Learn Optimism, is just about how to do it. Seligman is convinced that the defeatist style of explanation is to blame.

Seligman's style of explanation is your usual way of explaining what is happening to you. It has a significant effect on learned helplessness. An optimistic style of explanation suppresses helplessness, while a pessimistic style exacerbates it. How helpless or how active you can become when faced with everyday problems and serious setbacks depends on your way of explaining events.