I love my new blog. It gives me the ability to explain situations in more detail, and I can also talk to individuals that are as passionate about changing their lives for the better as I am. For example, I recently had a client who had a severe case of fear of failure. He was a brilliant man with several degrees behind his name. He was very sought after in the business world, where large corporates wanted him involved in their businesses to improve them. But every attempt he made to start his own business would fail. He had a fear of failure and was self-sabotaging himself.
I also had another client who wasn’t an older educated person but a nine-year-old impressionable young lady. She was given a project on Mars where she had to create a poster and give a speech on the planet. She enlisted the help of her mom and dad, and with their input, she made a stunning poster and then spent several days preparing for her speech. She would say it in the car going to the shops, going to her grandparents and performing it for them, and even would call family overseas and repeat the speech to them. She knew it backwards and forwards and was truly prepared. But the day she was to present it to the class, she felt sick with worry about failing and thought that her speech wasn’t good enough. She gave herself a headache and almost flu-like symptoms. Stress, anxiety and fear started to play a crucial part in her thoughts. When it finally came time to stand in front of the class, she completely forgot her words.
Fear of failure (also called “atychiphobia”) is when we allow that fear to stop us from doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals. Numerous factors might contribute to the fear of failure. For some people, having critical or unsupportive parents is a contributing factor. They carry the bad feelings from their childhood into adulthood since they were frequently undercut or made to feel inferior. Another factor could be an unpleasant experience that happened to them can also be a contributing factor.
For my older male client, it was critical parents in his past that had led him to believe he wasn’t good enough. When he was in an environment that praised him and felt safe, he was brilliant, but when going on his own, he was away from that support, and the voices from his past led him to self-sabotage, and he failed at every turn.
For this little girl, it was because of an experience she had in nursery school. A group of her peers belittled her when she would stand up to do something, and the responsible adult in the room never told them off or reassured her that what they were doing was wrong and that what she had done was very good. This inevitable fear of being a failure is what led to her self-sabotaging herself.
Thankfully her parents took action early, and with the help of a session with me, we could find the cause and reconstruct it into a positive memory. She is now twelve and is the captain of her primary school debate team.
Fear of failure is a genuine problem and is more common than you realise. You may be reading this and thinking that’s not me, but according to a 2018 survey conducted by Norwest Venture Partners, 90 per cent of CEOs “admit fear of failure keeps them up at night more than any other concern.”
Changing how you think about failure will help reduce your feelings of fear. Failure is part of life and can be essential to learn and acquiring new skills. It can certainly be disappointing, but it is crucial to maintain a healthy perspective toward the potential benefits of failing from time to time. Your mind and body already know how to heal; all they need is a bit of guidance. RTT empowers you to remove the weight of these experiences and overcome them.
All my love,
Leanne
www.leannehellon.co.za