Failure VS Success

Confronting the Fear of Failure

Failure is one of the "dirtiest" words in our society — including all the four letter words. Many people would rather be odd, hostile, overworked or many other "terrible" things than be seen as a failure. With the tremendous stress we place on success, this isn't surprising. After all, successful people are winners aren't they?

People feel sorry for losers and no one wants to be pitied. At the same time, we are constantly bombarded with truisms to make us feel better after an apparent failure. These are phrases like, "We learn from our mistakes, you can't win them all, everybody's wrong sometimes" — but these don't really help.


The Myth of Positive Thinking

People tend to use the phrase, "Think positive" as not thinking at all about what can go wrong. This kind of attitude usually leads to more failures, because people are lulled into a sense of security and fail to see the pitfalls in front of them.

People need to learn how to fail. Everyone does fail at some time, but it is a major problem only if they let one failure defeat them altogether or if it keeps them from attempting new ventures.


 Failing Well

How many people can lose a big business deal and say, "That was great. I learned something from it and am better for it." Unless we can say it - and really mean it - we probably weren't learning that much from the experience.

It may come as a surprise to hear that truly successful people not only have failed, but also are good at failing. Studies have found that we may have been lucky if we were forced to fail. One might even say that a key to success is learning to fail well.

A professional sports team is a good example. Losing not only doesn't permanently defeat them; they usually profit by that loss and learn to accept it. This doesn't mean they stop trying. Many people consider themselves failures when they really have just quit trying. We cannot "cop out" on our problems, because copping out can only leave us feeling inadequate.


What Are We Afraid Of?
To analyze the reasons why we feel pressure or anxiety about failure, we have to understand that it is the fear of failure that hurts far more than the failure itself. Actually, it is the fear of not being sure what will happen. Most of us can learn to accept and deal with the worst if we really know what's coming. We may not like it or look forward to it, but we can handle it. Not knowing is a different story. It creates anxiety, vacillation and a very gut level desire to escape the whole problem. Each of us is different in the things we fear, and to analyze the reasons we are pressured by the fear of failure we have to find out what kinds of failure bother us. There are many kinds of motivations, values and goals and ways we might not live up to our expectation. A few common fears might serve as examples.


Blowing Up Problems Out Of Proportion

We don't take it very literally when a teenage says, "If such and such happened, I'd just die," but the fear is a real one. It basically says that we need a certain amount of "something" to make life worth living. It might be the need to be admired, appreciated, or just accepted by others. But, we have to do certain things to be held in esteem by others.

Being accepted, for instance, implies that there are some general rules or norms to be followed. If we try to take these rules automatically as a right way to be, we won't be able to live up to all of them and we will continually feel inadequate.

Setting Unrealistic Expectations

Another fear centers on the need to be unique in some way — a need to be better than others. It is extremely unlikely that any one person can be better than all the other 6 billion people in the world in anything. If we feel we have to be better than somebody else, rather than just being the best we can, we are doomed to be a constant failure until the day we die. It is also a good point to remember that, even if we made it to the top, it wouldn’t be long before someone else came along who would better us.

Other common fears in this category include the fear of losing or of being beaten by the guy in the next office or the next sales call, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being controlled or hemmed in. There are many others, of course, each as potent to those who feel them as the next.


Strategies to Overcome Pressure and Beat the Fear of Failure

The question is often asked of psychologists, "I can see why I feel the pressure, but what can I do about it?" And usually the person thinks he's being kidded when the answer is, "Tell someone all about it and then use your imagination."

Basically two things happen when we begin to feel pressured. We get anxious or nervous and tighten up, and we begin to rely on our defense and escape mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are: getting a lot of sleep but still feeling tired, coming home at night and getting lost in the TV or newspaper, or a hundred others.

Dealing with Symptoms Rather than Causes

The result of these mechanisms is that we begin to lose sight of the issues or problems by trying to put them out of our minds so they don't worry us so much. As the problems become vague, solutions become more improbable, and, unconsciously, that makes us more anxious. This is not a weakness. Biologically we are programmed to either fight or run in a pressure situation, just the way animals are. We are also programmed this way psychologically. We all tend to find excuses to justify our behavior before it happens and this is our way of running. Frequently, we try to rationalize behavior after it happens and this is how we fight back.

Healthy Failure
Reducing the pressure requires that we break the mental set that "success is equal to right and therefore equal to good, while failure is equal to wrong and, as such, is bad." We have to learn to accept failure as a normal healthy part of life. We all fail sometimes, and if we can learn to bend rather than break under the pressure of failure, we are much better off.

In order to reduce the pressure and make us feel better, it is vital to reduce the fear of the problem by bringing everything out in the open — and not only the facts of the problem, but also our feelings about it. Go ahead and let the feelings out - it is a healthy reaction and one calculated to relieve stress.

We Used to Call it Shell Shock

During WWII, the Allies found out that wounded Russian Soldiers were not suffering from "shell shock" in hospitals as much as American soldiers were. The Russians insisted on keeping even wounded men on the lines, and there were far fewer long-term problems, because the men were forced to face their fears and get past them rather than run away from them.

Once we face the realities of the problem, we can bring our imagination into play. We can imagine what the worst outcomes of the problem could be, and then think of alternatives open to us. Once a person realizes the worst and can develop alternatives, he is relieved of much of the terrible pressure of uncertainty.

Copping Out

Of vital importance, also, is not giving up. A good illustration of this is a salesman who knows that for every sale he makes, he will get ten rejections. If he starts his day with a rejection, he can say, "I'm probably not going to be able to do anything today, so I might as well knock off," or he can say, "One down, only nine to go until I make my sale." The latter will keep him on the job longer with a much more satisfying feeling and better sales.


The Basic Steps in Summary

1. Talk about it — with somebody who will listen and be neutral. Get it out — facts and feelings.

2. Imagine trying to overcome the problem and falling short of the goal (failing); then figure what the worst consequences would be and what could be done about them. Thus, if the worst does happen, you're at least prepared and if it doesn't, then you're relieved and probably pleasantly surprised.

3. We can give ourselves extra chances. An illustration of this might be the baseball team whose slogan is, "Wait till next year." Eventually their continued effort will pay off.

4. Have something to fall back on. For many people, religion is a back-up. They turn to it when they do fail, in order to ask for help. Other people develop strong personal relationships to fall back on realizing that a person can't do everything himself.

5. Most powerful of all - take the chance and face it. There is nothing better to reduce the fear of failure than having it happen and knowing what it can and can't do. We must face it, live through it and prove to ourselves we can survive it.

A happy person can be a bit childlike at times.  Try to live life with no regrets.

Discover How to Live a Happy Life

Living a happy life is not something that we just know how to do. As we go on in life it almost seems as if people teach us how to live miserable lives instead of happy ones. The truth is that you are supposed to live a happy life. Here are 3 keys to help illuminate the road to a happy life.

1. Find out what makes you happy.
Ask someone to write down 50 things that make them happy and you will find that most people start struggling to come up with things after the first 10 or 20. If you don’t know what makes you happy then you don’t know what to work for to make you happy. Stumbling across happiness is like stumbling across a winning lottery ticket, it rarely happens. So what makes you happy?

2.Pursue what makes you happy.
Now that you know what makes you happy it’s time to start implementing a plan that will help you reach happiness. It’s great that you now what makes you happy now but information without action is useless. What actions will it take for you to be happy? A hint to doing this is making the entire actions dependant on you. If your happiness is dependant upon someone else you are on the wrong track. Don’t rely on other people to make you happy.

3. Learn not to stress.

Notice here that I said ‘learn’ not to stress. This may take some time but it’s important that you learn to not stress out over everything. Stress not only causes mental fatigue but it can also cause physical problems in your body. If necessary go to a stress management seminar and learn how to do this. The less stress that you have in your life the happier you will be.

Watch his eyes when he talks. That’s happiness at work right there.

Are you as passionate about your job? Do you know as much about your products/field? Do you care as deeply about making your customers happy and helping them make good choices? Are you as free to do things your way, rather than do what everyone else does?

If you are – kudos! I bet you’re happy at work.

If not, I humbly submit to you that you are wasting your work life.

This level of happiness at work is not reserved for a few special individuals who luck into the right career or the right genetic makeup for happiness. Anyone can get it. Anyone!

And it’s not just that you could. You should.

How to Feel Happy at Work 7 Secrets of a "Thank God It's Monday" Workplace

by Roxanne Emmerich

What accounts for the difference between "Oh crap, it's Monday" and "Thank God it's Monday"? It's your happiness. And, for your own emotional and mental health, you need to feel happy at work.

It all boils down to seven habits that can change everything about the culture of your workplace.

1. Show up fully and commit with all your heart

At work, we think of home. At home, we think of work. Time to stop that. The first step toward a TGIM workplace is being present and accounted for at work. Thinking about being elsewhere leads to resenting where you are. While you are at work, commit to work with all your heart. This is what I call throwing your heart over the bar--committing 100 percent to the moment and task before you.

2. Communicate clearly

Use powerful and positive language about what you will do and the attitude you expect from others. If a TGIM workplace is your goal, take the time to make your communications clear on every level.

3. Go beyond the job description

Going beyond the job description happens when you pitch in and help others at work without expecting reward. Willingly share the load. If you're caught up on your tasks, help someone else who is crunching for a deadline. Instead of feeling like it's an extra burden, you will actually feel like you play a bigger role in your company than you ever did before.


4. Don't tolerate dysfunctional behaviors

Establish a zero-tolerance policy for talking behind another person's back. Then give each other permission to address conflict head-on, out loud, courageously and honestly. Create a trusting and open environment and watch the dysfunction ebb away.

5. Clean up your messes

Relationships are built on trust. Without that foundation, there is no basis for a relationship. We breach the trust each time we don't do what we said we would do. But here's the thing--that breach can be healed quickly IF you come back and clean up the mess. Acknowledge that the results are not okay then make a commitment to make things right and prevent a recurrence.

6. Live a life of profound service

Once you place yourself in the service of those around you--your family, your colleagues and your customers--every moment becomes imbued with purpose and significance. You will feel GOOD.

As you drive to work, begin thinking about how the work you do is serving others and contributing to their success and happiness. This is the essence of true service, and the key to a workplace that draws you happily back, Monday after Monday after Monday.

7. Celebrate

Every project consists of little steps and little victories along the way. Recognize and celebrate them in both large and small ways. Build a system of celebrations and rewards--quarterly, weekly, daily--and follow through like your company's life depends on it. Because, (psst) it does.

Acquire these seven habits and spread them through your workplace. Then be sure to notice the first Monday your hand reaches for the alarm--and you smile. You can love your job and feel happy at work if you follow these 7 secrets.