Source: http://briankim.net
Transfer: Dmitry Balezin
One of the main obstacles preventing a person from taking action is the fear of making a mistake. If you think about it, you will realize that this fear is actually a collection of other fears:
fear of appearing stupid in the face of other people, fear of losing time and resources, fear of subjecting your self-confidence to a blow;
... and all these fears are packed into one - fear of making a mistake.
So how do you overcome this fear?
An event such as error must be removed from the stigma of fear. How? Very simple.
Accept once and for all the UNDISPUTED, STONE-RIGID, MILLION PERCENTAGE TRUE FACT that you WILL BE WRONG in your life.
You will do them period.
Feel the weight off your shoulders.
Feel how much easier it is now to move forward with this conviction.
Realize also that it is natural to make a mistake.
You are an imperfect person, therefore, it would be quite reasonable to assume that the actions of an imperfect person will also be imperfect. Therefore, there is no need to make a big event out of a common mistake. It's not about mistakes ...
It's all about ERROR CORRECTION.
With errors, you can see your next step. This is what they were created for. If you are afraid of mistakes, you will not be able to understand what you need to do to get to the desired goal.
Some may argue: “They say, anyone can cope with a mistake in the technical side of the matter, no one is afraid of them. What about the social side? "
What about the fear of appearing funny in the eyes of others when you make a mistake? How do you overcome this?
This will help my beloved quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
“Neither critics, nor those who point out how much a strong man made a mistake, nor those who point out where the doer could have done something better, do not matter. The praise goes to the one who was in the business; to one whose face is stained with dust, sweat and blood; someone who is passionately striving for something; to one who makes mistakes again and again, since there is no effort without mistakes; someone who nevertheless experienced great enthusiasm and great dedication; to one who has dedicated himself to a worthy goal; to one who, at the best outcome, triumphs from a great achievement, and, at the worst, is defeated by a daring attempt. The place of this person will never be near those cold and timid souls who do not know either victories or defeats. "
Further, reasoning over this quote, you will understand that it is the people who make mistakes that ultimately inevitably grow and learn. When moving towards the goal, they will stumble more than once, but they will learn to adapt to the new situation. At a certain moment, this series of mistakes will turn into that baggage for them, which will very well help them in the event of a storm, whence you do not understand.
Those who do not make mistakes will be very hard hit by such a storm, just because they will not have developed "adaptation muscles" ... they will have a much harder time.
We all think about the future, trying to understand and define it, as if we are looking into a real otherworldly window with anxiety and hope. We live with a hidden question on our lips “What's next? Does my path lead to success? " No one knows the answer, but everyone hopes and believes. These are our mental supports - expectations and anticipations, personal inner dances with a tambourine over the cup of fate. And whenever the "signs" converge, a "sign" happens, and the mind is filled with predictions. Here a person won something, flashed in public, did everything without hesitation - and there is joy in his soul, a successful, bright future is imagining in his mind. And if you make a mistake, stumble, lose, and omens with the same realism paint future failure.
We apparently just do not know how to live without the future, do not know how to understand that we do not know it at all. And therefore, in order to protect themselves from the frightening uncertainty, they are trained in the "magical" art of predicting their own destiny by signs that we catch everywhere and join them in the pattern of the future.
Even gloomy predictions about future failure are much easier for us to accept than the total uncertainty of the next moment. Therefore, we veil the unpredictability of tomorrow with predictions in which we sincerely believe. Approximately everyone has an armada of criteria in their heads, according to which the mind determines which picture about the future life to stage for itself.
The divination process is carried out using a virtual idol - with which the mind compares its life. If the comparison is not in favor of life, then the predictions are gloomy. The mind calls such disagreements with the idol errors and failures.
We do not know ourselves or our future, we are not sure of ourselves, but we are one hundred percent sure of the criteria of some abstract "correctness" that must be met. "It is necessary", otherwise the signs will be formed in such a sequence, when the mind again believes in a dark future. And he believes firmly, unconditionally and “holy”.
Therefore, even logically understanding all the irrationality of this belief, we still anticipate the pain of unjustified hopes - and are afraid. That is why we try to choose and justify such a sequence of actions that saves from "mistakes" - one of the most terrible "signs". Otherwise, the movie theater built into the mind will show horror again.
We are afraid of mistakes, because we latently know what we will believe after committing them, when the mind creates its next tragic masterpiece "about ourselves and life."
Therefore, in order not to feel like an ordinary layman, not to learn and not to make mistakes, no one is in a hurry to get out of it. There, you can calmly play the role of a tired kitchen thinker, who has learned the life of a kitchen thinker. The main thing is not to stick out. And then the comfort "for some reason" becomes a suffocating dungeon of their own fears.
This happens when the sphere of the desired seems closed and alien, because no approving invitations come from there. The mind, professing faith in the "right", knows: if you fail, and you will turn out to be an absurd and ridiculous loser, they will point fingers and mockingly condemn, they say, "Where are you going, insignificance?"
Fear of mistakes kills desires and deprives of energy, leading to depressive apathy. This syndrome of learned helplessness, called "It won't work anyway," is a dramatic creativity with which the mind plays itself out.
We are unjustifiably afraid of mistakes and failures, because they include idle turns of mental slippage in ideas about our own fallacy and failure. Successes and mistakes are the very signs by which the mind trained in neuroses determines its fate. He whispers to himself: "Only losers are wrong."
Here I want to emphasize once again - we do not know our future. Quite quite. We are just guessing. And we take some of our forecasts, whose omens have neatly agreed, for the truth, which is embodied in our hope and hopelessness.
While self-esteem and the picture of the future depend on individual successes and mistakes, they fluctuate like an exchange trend in a crisis economy. And even when the ego swells from success to gigantic dimensions, it is still scary to act, because every step threatens to fail, implying a personal end of the world.
But, if we omit superstitions and look at what is happening impartially, it is easy enough to understand that there is no development in life without mistakes. We call them failures, give up, we are afraid of them, like curses, when in fact it is mistakes that give the juicy fruits of personal development on the path of life. Making mistakes is not only normal, but just as natural as everything in nature.
The most valuable experience comes not from lifeless theories, but from real practice. Mistakes are the very real experience, which with all the clearest clarity indicates directly what specifically here and now it is advisable to pay more attention to in order to act more effectively. Errors are a worthy payment for the lesson they teach.
And if somehow it turned out not to take into account feelings, then personal damage from the overwhelming majority of "mistakes" would tend to zero. All our problems, in essence, boil down to how we live them, what kind of pictures the mind draws, admiring and horrified by our own creations. Therefore, what we call mistakes is sheer convention - the difference between reality and an invented ideal.
Even your own death can be called a mistake. Personal, judging by the rumors, is inevitable for everyone. In nature, everything is transient. Otherwise, the flight of crumbling autumn leaves would have to be called the fall.
And in everyday mistakes there is no ultimate defeat, there is only continuous learning, impossible without mistakes. All miscalculations and failures are not a sign of dense stupidity and not a symptom of ultimate failure, but a natural consequence of gaining new experience in a specific narrow area.
In fact, mistakes mean that the task turned out to be more difficult than it was initially seen, and therefore the mistakes made are natural and allow us to consider the situation deeper and more realistic.
And if you look at life more broadly, then a significant part of those very personal miscalculations turns into luck. In this sense, the greatest mistakes are demanding impeccable infallibility from oneself and avoiding development out of fear of being wrong.
We can think about the future, looking forward to the implementation of plans. But even repeated miscalculations and failures are not a reason to give up and fall off their feet, but only an excuse to accumulate the experience gained.
"If people did not do stupid things, nothing smart would have appeared."Ludwig Wittgenstein
How do you think the fear of making the wrong decisions can get in the way? The answer may shock you: most people do not succeed because of this fear. Still wondering if this article is worth reading?
Every morning we wake up and face new challenges. This is how everything is arranged, and this is how it happens throughout life. Even if you are not always ready to accept these challenges, fate will place them on your shoulders and, in the end, you will have to accept them. And you will have to make decisions, which is not always easy for everyone.
Many are faced with one serious problem - the fear of change, the fear of making the wrong decisions and making their point of view. This instinctive fear can ruin our lives, it distorts our view of ourselves and the people around us. Be that as it may, fear is just a programmed emotion that arises automatically in response to potential danger - sometimes imaginary and rarely justified. During the onset of an attack of fear, various chemical reactions occur in our body - the release of adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol into the blood. And the stronger the fear, the more pronounced the reaction.
Simplistically, fear can be divided into two types: healthy and unhealthy fear. For example, the fear of spiders, the fear of crowds, the fear of failure are all unhealthy, unfounded fears. This fear is counterproductive, it causes stress in us, prevents us from acting, disrupts the normal course of things. On the other hand, when we are afraid to smoke or drink too much because it could harm our health, this is a healthy fear. Healthy fears, as opposed to unhealthy ones, motivates us to make better decisions and better organize our lives.
Tragically, many of us face unhealthy fears. It is because of these fears that we limit ourselves to reaching great heights in life. It is unhealthy fear that is the cause of most of the unfulfilled desires and unrealized ideas.
As mentioned above, fear arises as a result of an instinctive reaction to potential danger. In order to stop being afraid of something unreasonable, we must begin to analyze and manage potential danger.
1. Look beyond the danger. When faced with potential danger, we start to panic, which in turn makes us make the wrong decisions or run away from responsibility. Often we do not even think that the fear we are experiencing at the moment is not justified by anything. We begin to build in our head mental images of the negative outcome of the situation, and this prevents us from making the right decisions. To avoid this: take a deep breath and think about all the possible consequences and the involvement of these consequences. Most likely, things are not as bad as we thought at the beginning.
2. Positive attitude. We have enough strength to cope with any problems, and nothing can stop us. Try to be positive about any situation. Consider it from all sides, especially from the positive side. Of course, no one asks you to look for something good in a very deplorable situation. But in everyday problems, try to be more optimistic.
3. Expand your comfort zone. There are three important areas for us to find: the comfort zone, the study zone, and the panic zone. All this can be represented in the form of circles. The center circle will represent the comfort zone, the middle circle will represent the study area, and the third outer circle will represent the panic zone. Scientists have proven that the edge of our comfort zone is the best place to learn and grow. As long as we are "inside", everything is fine, but when faced with a completely unfamiliar situation, we begin to panic. We must learn how to behave correctly in a new situation, and learn to make decisions without fear, even if not the right decisions. Through practice and training, over time you will expand your comfort zone.
4. If you want to refuse, take a step forward. Let fear and doubt torment you, let your inner critic scream at full speed, preventing you from making decisions, no matter what, take a step forward. This will expand your boundaries, making uncomfortable situations comfortable. You never know if you’ll be successful if you don’t try. Therefore, be brave and make mistakes, make decisions, become stronger.
5. Don't avoid or postpone tasks and activities. Often people postpone or delay solving certain tasks just because they are afraid of the result. But why postpone, because you still have to do it, then it won't get any easier, you will only complicate the situation. The pressure and stress builds up over time, so stop procrastinating or avoiding solving problems and start doing everything on time. This will help you feel more confident.
6. Don't be afraid of competition. We're just competitors, just like all other people. But we must not give up simply because we are afraid. Remember, just because you can't read the fear on your competitors' face doesn't mean they aren't afraid. The most important rule of victory is participation. And also, stop looking up to others, look up to yourself. Compare only your present self with your past.
7. Strengthen your will with religious beliefs. Faith will strengthen your spirit, and you will more easily make decisions in situations that are new to you.
8. Get enough sleep. Usually, dealing with the stress that comes with unknown situations can be much more difficult when you don't get enough sleep. Your body requires healthy rest and if you haven't got enough sleep for too long, you will encounter another problem that can aggravate the situation, namely fatigue. Sleeping well will keep you refreshed when making important decisions.
Stop being afraid of making wrong decisions, you never know if it is really right, and if you don’t try, what will come of it? Will you wait for new opportunities? Was it worth it then to miss the old opportunity, without a single attempt to grab it? Be brave and wish you success!
The fear of being wrong is familiar to every person. This anxious feeling allows a person to avoid hasty decisions associated with their consequences, but often it also slows us down, preventing us from performing actions that lead to success. However, a person is able to overcome the fear of error and continue to move forward. Think about whether your child will be able to ride a bike or skate if they refuse to try again after the first fall? Will she be able to learn to swim if she does not take off an inflatable ring? Probably not. Fear of error affects the adult in a similar way - it blocks the path to success, preventing the person from making new attempts.
Fear of error (the scientific name is atychiphobia) at first glance may seem like a product of our time or the result of personal failure. Judge for yourself: society longs for new achievements, sets the framework for success, makes you achieve something so quickly that a person is unable to realize his actions.
Such a structure of society is capable of provoking many situations that traumatize the psyche. The most tender age for perception is childhood, and which of today's children has not encountered an overly demanding teacher or parent? Hence the fear of doing something that will entail censure of the authority figure.
More importantly, the fear of making a mistake has an evolutionary background. It has not only conscious but also unconscious reasons for its occurrence. In the process of the formation of the human species, the fear of performing new, seemingly unsafe actions protected the representatives of the genus Homo from injury and death.
Due to the imperfection of the instincts, which once protected a person from flames and sharp teeth, it became entrenched in the subconscious and continued to work already in a modern safe environment. The instinctive fear of performing unfamiliar actions responds equally well to both the likelihood of a real threat and an imaginary one.
A person who is afraid of mistakes is forced to stay in the "comfort zone" and loses the chance to develop freely, gain new experience and learn new skills. The fear of making a mistake narrows the range of possible human actions, forcing him to exist in a limited mental space. This can lead to personal stagnation or even degradation.
How to deal with the fear of mistakes?
Here are some examples of methods that can help you overcome your fear of being wrong. Let's make a reservation right away that they are not universal and not suitable for everyone. In addition, for many, the fear reaches such a degree of intensity that it is difficult for them to even begin to implement the following recommendations. If the fear is too strong to start moving on its own along the path of getting rid of it, it is better to see a professional psychologist who will help you head on the right path. One such specialist is a psychologist-hypnologist. Baturin Nikita Valerievich.
Positive look
Try to view any result of your action as a rewarding life experience, even if it seems to you to be an absolute failure. Think for yourself: if everything turned out as planned, and not how it actually happened, then you would never come to the current conclusions, results, and to a real understanding of reality. You would never see what would happen if you did this and not otherwise. And even if this experience turned out to be negative, in the future you will have something to compare it with, and therefore a successful combination of circumstances will be even more appreciated by you.
At first, these thoughts will be quite strained, and it will be difficult to train yourself to think in such a way. However, you will gradually get used to this way of thinking and you will be able to learn from the circumstances of the really valuable lessons. For example, one of the richest companies on the planet - Facebook - has a motto that is roughly translated as "Mow, but move." The company's experience confirms that if its leader did not take on risky decisions, he would never have achieved the success that he has now.
In marketing, there is another catch phrase - “Every“ no ”takes you one step closer to“ yes ”." This can be interpreted in different ways: each refusal makes it faster to meet with the right client, or that each refusal forces the seller to be more sophisticated and successful. Either way, this principle works - persistence and experience make progress inevitable.
Awareness of the cause
Think about what the real reason for your fear is. What are you afraid of when you avoid doing something? What can this lead to? Maybe you are afraid of a non-catastrophic result, but of a refusal or a fall in your authority? How tangible and critical will the consequences of your oversight be? Do they look as nightmarish as you fear them?
Think about the opposite: what you get if you get down to business. Imagine what you can gain by taking responsibility for the risk. Realize the simple truth: the world around you is not an evil creature hostile towards you. No one will obstruct you without good reason, and therefore it is worth trying to do - and the world will help you move on.
Movement without stopping
In your planned business, try to follow the principle of "eating the elephant in parts." Metaphorically, it can be represented as follows: in front of you is an elephant, which you need to eat. When you look at the whole carcass, the task seems insurmountable. You think about how huge this carcass is and that you will never be able to handle it.
However, if you divide the elephant into small parts and gradually eat it, then in time you will cope. So with other things: at first the task seems too difficult for you, but it is worth making a step-by-step plan, and everything becomes easier. Small steps lead you to a big goal, the main thing is not to stop on your way, because with each step you become more confident and stronger.
On the way, you will encounter fear more than once, not twice. You need to challenge yourself to try yourself in something that scares you and seems impossible. Overcoming atypical difficulties for you will allow you to gain new experience and gain self-confidence, temper your character, even find a different philosophy in your life. Faced with various difficulties, you become more prepared for the subsequent challenges that arise.
Remember that all people have fears - this is normal and inherent in a person by his nature. It is impossible not to be afraid of anything. A person gains courage only when he looks his fear in the face and overcomes it over and over again. You cannot overcome fear by ignoring it.
Should not become an obstacle to a fulfilling life and success in various fields. A person is able to overcome this fear and lead a rich, harmonious life - his desire and a safe environment in the form of support of loved ones are enough. If your own strength is not enough, it makes sense to turn to a specialist who will help you choose the path and means to achieve.
Don't be afraid to be wrong!
“It is easy to say, but difficult to do” - the distrustful reader will say and will be right in a way.
But never mind, today we will finally learn how to get rid of the fear of mistakes. The technique proposed in this article will help you, dear visitors of SIZO, to reconsider your internal attitudes and, thanks to this, react more consciously to mistakes.
Probably in each of us, even if very deep in our souls, there is a brave adventurer who knows his real destiny.
A scientist or a businessman, a writer or an artist, a programmer or a designer - it is not so important what our soul lies in. More important is what each of us can find.
Unfortunately, it is the fear of making a mistake that often prevents us from fully expressing ourselves. Because of this, many of our dreams run the risk of remaining dreams.
- We are afraid to do something wrong.
- We are scared that we can spend a lot of time and get nothing.
- We are afraid to leave our usual comfort zone.
- We are afraid to seem funny to others.
- We are afraid to do imperfect things and make imperfect decisions.
- We have already made mistakes before, so we are afraid of repetition.
Either way, the fear of making a mistake always commands you to retreat.
Don't be afraid to be wrong!
Remember that each event is neutral in itself.
It is we who give it a positive or negative coloring with our attitude.
In other words, it depends only on us how to perceive what happened to us.
Each error is:
1) Experience.
2) The ability to draw conclusions and act correctly in the future.
Making mistakes, we get closer to the goal anyway.
The inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, created the light bulb after 1,000 failed attempts. 1000 times he was wrong! But he did not consider these attempts unsuccessful. Edison said that he found 1000 ways how you can't make a light bulb.
Friends, it is worth realizing one simple thing: an unsuccessful attempt is not the end of life, it is a component of the movement towards the goal.
The famous basketball player Michael Jordan made 9000 unsuccessful shots, lost 300 matches and "screwed up" the game 26 times, not living up to expectations.
If a person is afraid to make mistakes, then this fear significantly inhibits his development.
But when we give up fear about it and allow ourselves to be wrong, the incredible happens. The number of errors is decreasing! After all, giving ourselves the right to make a mistake, we are thereby. Which, in turn, gives us a more favorable development of events.
And even if we make mistakes, we should take them as an experience, as part of our path. This is how it really is. A mistake is a great opportunity to learn something and become better.
Of course, there are situations when you cannot be wrong. Surgery, rocketry, nuclear power plants ... There are areas of activity where the cost of error is too high. In such cases, you must rely on quality training and careful calculation. Well, you need to move from simple to complex, gaining experience.
The article is devoted to "everyday" mistakes - those mistakes that do not allow us to open up, which prevent us from taking risks and reaching the top. Getting rid of the fear of making such mistakes means giving yourself a chance to truly open up in this life.
Sometimes it happens that with our mind we understand that it is possible to make mistakes. However, out of habit, we wind up and scold ourselves for mistakes. There is such a nagging feeling in the soul ... In this case, it is just wonderful if you have close and understanding people. Tell them how you feel. They will definitely support you. Thanks to these people, you will understand that everything will work out for you. And that any mistake is a great opportunity to get better.
It's okay to be afraid. The main thing is to understand the cause of your fear. Otherwise, you can regret all your life about missed opportunities and unfulfilled plans. But having understood and neutralized the fear of making a mistake, we are much closer to the realization of our goals.
Friends, don't be afraid to make mistakes! After all, it is correctly said - learn from mistakes!
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