So related to ‘the fear of failure’, we’ve covered 1) working to eliminate the fear not the failure, and 2) understanding what fear is. Now let’s talk about how to eliminate or, at least, reduce the fear. One part of this is changing our objectives in the situation; thereby, reframing the possible outcome(s) into something we won’t fear. (The second part relates to changing the habitual response which we’ll cover in a later article, since it takes some time to explain how we can change our habits.)
Reframing the situation is a valuable and simple approach to eliminating the fear. Let’s take the classic situation where a single guy ‘fears’ approaching a single woman he does not know in a bar/coffee shop. In this classic situation, his goal is really to ‘meet her and hope that she will like him…’ and what he ‘fears’ is the embarrassment of being ‘rejected’ or being made to look stupid. (Of course, no one else can make us feel embarrassed. Like so many other emotions, it is our choice to be embarrassed or not.)
So to reframe this situation, let’s look at what he’s actually trying to do. He doesn’t care to meet a woman who’s a jerk or who would want to embarrass him or make him feel bad. He wants to meet and get to know a woman that [insert your criteria here, but I’ll say…] is kind, interesting, and has a positive outlook on life. So he really has a set of criteria which he wants to find out if she matches or not. So he’s interested in information. He may ‘reject’ her in the same way she may ‘reject’ him. If his buddy said, ‘Watch out for her, she’s really creepy’ [or whatever], he’d have the information he needed and would be done with it. The point is, it’s not really about being ‘rejected’ or not, it’s about getting to know her. So if he approaches her, and she’s mean and tries to embarrass him, he can just walk away because he’s clearly learned what he needed to know. And as long as he was kind and considerate, the situation reveals much more [negatively] about her, then him. And anyone observing the situation would see it that way. So even the potential ‘witch’ doesn’t need to be feared.
The bigger point here is really about orientation and perspective. Even though it goes against pop psychology, being ‘growth’ oriented (seeking knowledge and insight, and improving yourself) is a much more valuable perspective than being ‘goal’ oriented. The same applies in our work (and most areas of our life). Being growth oriented is much more powerful than being goal oriented. Why? When we’re growth-oriented we seek to ‘grow to become the type of person that naturally has the goal in their life’. When we’re goal-oriented, we’re focused on putting in the effort (only) to achieve the goal. And as long as our achievement is based upon effort vs. growth we will always struggle to achieve. However, once we become the person that naturally has that achievement as part of who they are, the achievement will come naturally.
So the most valuable reframing of any situation is focusing on growing and learning, rather than achieving a particular outcome. We can’t control outcomes, only what we learn from the situation.
