Fear of Failure
Posted on November 7, 2012 by Tom Evans
One of the major blocks to our creativity is the avoidance of failure. If you don’t actually do anything then you can’t possibly fail.
Job done! Fear of Ridicule neatly avoided quickly and easily!
Somewhat ironically though, writers, artists and musicians can be really creative on how they go about this avoidance strategy. As for the other types of fears, in nearly all cases, other behaviour masks what is actually occurring.
Typical signs that this fear is in operation include being a ’busy fool’ and finding you are always serving other first before generating our own output.
Expert at Creative Procrastination
Low self-esteem and pessimistic tendencies can also come to play. You may also find you give up at the first hurdle and any sign of adversity. You become an expert at creative procrastination.
These are all the tell-tale signs you are avoiding failure.
The route out of this downwards spiral is one of the most satisfying things we can do – we must learn to enjoy being self-indulgent and to put ourselves first. When you do this, we not only earn the respect of the people who we have been serving but we show them ways they can do this for themselves whilst also reducing their reliance on us.
There are seven steps to take:
1. Diarise appointments with your Creative Self for your projects
2. Guard them with a passion
3. Share these dates with those that might thwart you by crossing your boundaries
4. Before each Creative session, go for a walk or meditate
5. During the session, switch off all distractions – phones, social media …
6. When you finish each session give yourself a treat and pat on the back … I have a digestive biscuit and cup of tea and sometimes I tweet to the world to declare another milestone has been reached
7. Then, and only then, get back to working with and helping others … you will find they haven’t been waiting for you and were getting on with other ‘stuff’
When you are successful in this practice, you realise that the real failure was not to even try in the first place.
You are now ready to take on the next fear, that of the Fear of the Unknown …
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