Are you afraid to make mistakes or to fail?
A common denominator for the clients who come for coaching is a great fear of making mistakes, mistakes, or failure. This holds us back and limits us humans and much of the coaching is about changing and breaking through these limiting thoughts and behaviors, to get new results and changes.
The perception that making mistakes and failure is bad, means that you see this as an “enemy” that can harm you. But what if mistakes, mistakes, and failures could instead be a friend or teacher?
What are mistakes and failures?
If you go through life afraid of getting hurt if you make a mistake, mistake or fail, it means you will hold yourself back and isolate yourself from many activities, meeting other people, and generally not living up to your potential. You will probably feel bad because it affects your whole lifestyle and in the long run, you may actually get sick.
The fear of making mistakes, mistakes, or failing is based on a belief that making mistakes, mistakes, and failing is bad and that it leads to you being punished ie you or someone else will hand out a punishment. The punishment can be both physical and psychological, i.e. everything from being beaten to being exposed to negative comments or abusive treatment. If you punish yourself, it is primarily condescending and demeaning thoughts about yourself that are punished.
It is worth mentioning that physical and mental pain are handled in the same part of the brain (Cingulate cortex), which means that we cannot distinguish the origin of the pain, but rather that it hurts!
Unfortunately, this leads to a negative spiral, a so-called conditioning or more simply explained, cautious behaviors because we don’t want to experience or feel the pain that we experience and it makes us be more careful to avoid getting hurt.
An alternative strategy that we humans use to avoid feeling this pain is to shift the blame. It depends on others, childhood, bad luck, dating laws, etc. It can also lead to various addictions, where we want to suppress these inner pains.
In conclusion, we can say that the fear of making mistakes, mistakes, and failures is actually what makes us really bad.
What can failures and mistakes teach us?
If instead of seeing errors, mistakes, and failures as enemies, these can become friends or teachers that:
First of all, can teach us not to feel bad about ourselves if we make mistakes, mistakes, or fail.
Second, means that error, mistake, or failure is no longer negative, when we learn something from it, then it is called development instead.
In summary, it means making mistakes, mistakes and failing is the basis of human evolution and development.
What can you do if you fail and do mistakes?
Ok, you have made a mistake, mistake or failure, then it’s time to evolve by following the 5 steps below:
Depending on the degree and severity of what’s happening, you may first need to limit what’s happening so it doesn’t get worse.
You then need to properly analyze and understand the error, mistake, or failure.
In the next step, you need to understand why there was an error, mistake, or failure. What steps led to this? Feel free to sit down and write and draw if you feel it is necessary.
Then think about where in the sequence of events it went wrong and think about whether next time you can do it differently. Think further about what, how, and in what way you can do something different.
Decide that next time you will do this differently and it is now that you start reprogramming your brain to do differently next time ie you have learned and developed as a person!
In conclusion, the difference between us humans and how successful we are is the ability to learn from our mistakes, mistakes, and failures.
Make failures and mistakes your friends!
If you want to succeed and be successful for real, you need to make lots of mistakes, mistakes, and failures to learn and develop. If you can also combine that with learning from the mistakes, mistakes, and failures of others, then you have unique keys to achieving your goals and being successful in whatever you want.
This month's challenge is to stop being so afraid of mistakes, and instead view them as a learning opportunity! I surely understand that you might not be very interested in making so many mistakes, but you can learn from your past mistakes and then realize, that you learned, so without the mistake, you would not have learned anything!
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, mistakes or fail, be much more afraid not to!!
Now you need to make a decision, do you want fear or development to win?
Good luck!
What can you do if you are no longer afraid of making mistakes, mistakes, or failure?
Do you want to try if coaching works for you? – Book a free coaching session >>>
/Claes-Goran Hammar
Master Coach & Mentor
