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.

How to Cope With Arrogant People

Arrogant people seem to think that they know everything and they can really get on your nerves. This is an approach to coping with them.
  
Steps

1. Assess the situation. Why do you feel that a person is being arrogant? Have they been condescending to you or have they never spoken to you? If there has not been an incident that showed you this person feels superior to you, don't assume he or she is arrogant too quickly. You might wrong him or her.

2. Know that arrogant people are really quite insecure. They seek to dominate and control because they are afraid of being dominated and controlled.

3. Enter an encounter with an arrogant person with the strong and confident realization that you are well and strong. There is nothing they can say or do that can undermine you. Your sense of confidence and self-worth will prohibit you from being vulnerable to an arrogant person's total inability to relate to others and the sometimes noxious or cruel things that come out of their mouths.

4. Try to ignore the arrogance of the person you encounter. Instead, probe for something you can enjoy about your encounter. Perhaps they do have some knowledge to impart. Perhaps they can tell an interesting story. Perhaps it's just enjoyable to find humor in their arrogance.


5. Use the encounter as an opportunity to improve your listening skills or tolerance.

6. Try to ignore anything that they say or how they act, and they will probably stop bothering you eventually.

7. Be honest. If this isn't working and the arrogant person is still getting on your nerves, tell them that you think they are being arrogant and really tell them how you feel. Don't shout or swear or insult them more than is necessary, because then you will just look evil.

8. If possible, ignore the arrogant person completely (not just their behaviour).
* If you must acknowledge them, generally speaking, in a group setting you can get away with addressing the group as a whole rather than speaking to the arrogant person specifically: For example, instead of saying,"Hi there, Wendy," say, "Hi there, everyone." Also, don't ask, "How are you?" as this might evoke a rude response.

9. If you work with a consistently rude and arrogant person, whenever you see them coming, suddenly be incredibly busy. Pick up the phone and pretend to be having a conversation. If they are specifically wanting your attention, keep them waiting for as long as you can get away with it. Have a column of figures handy to be added up three times over. When you finally do acknowledge them, do so in a distracted, brisk, impersonal way whilst commencing yet another task. For example, say something like, 'Right, what can I do for you," as you pick up the telephone receiver. This technique often works very successfully because you are, in effect, "putting the arrogant person in their place." This is the opposite of what they want.


Tips

* Generally, arrogant people won't listen to what you have to say, so sometimes you just need to smile and nod, comfortable in being the more secure person.

* When someone is just driving you crazy with their arrogance, you might ask them, very politely, "May I ask how you became such an expert on this subject? Did you study? Did you learn this from having a bad experience? Is there anything you know nothing about that I might be able to help you with?"


Warnings

* Ignoring an arrogant person may be effective in getting them to leave you alone but recognize that arrogant people have a way of taking up the air in a room. So even though they're not talking to you, you may still find them annoying to be around.

* Try not to get into any type of debate with them, because they'll never hear your side of the story and if they do, they will continually tell you you're wrong. Often times, arrogant people will try to make you feel insecure and at fault. He/she will do this in an attempt to demonstrate control over the situation. If this happens to you, do not get mad at all, that's what they want from you. Instead consciously understand their belittling actions and see their intended conclusion from their perspective. Act wise and in control, but don't escalate the situation by responding in an angry or hostile manner.

Are You Doing What You Really Want To With Your Life?

Builders cling to a personal commitment that’s so compelling to them – something so important to them that they would actually do it for free – that they must do it despite popularity.

From this quote, I derive a simple test to know whether or not you are now doing what matters to you. Simply give honest answer to these two questions:

1. Will you keep doing what you do if you do it for free?
2. Will you keep doing what you do if it never becomes popular?

If your answers to both questions are yes, then you are doing what really matters to you. If you answer is yes to only one what of them, then you are doing something that somehow matters but it doesn’t really matter. If your answers to both questions are no … well, you can guess, right?

Now, some thoughts from me.

I believe many people would say no to the first question regarding their job. Many people doesn’t really like their job; they just do it for the money. Once the money factor is gone, there’s no reason to keep doing it. Considering this, no wonder many people do not have fulfilling life. I remember what Steve Jobs said:

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

However, I think the second question is even harder than the first one. There are many people who are willing to do something for free as long as they get some sort of popularity. Open source movement comes to my mind as an example. The people writing open source software do programming for free so they certainly pass the first question. But many of them – consciously or unconsciously – look for reputation and approval for what they do. This is absolutely normal, of course. Everyone needs to be appreciated. But if someone does something that really matters, it will be so compelling that the urge to do it is even bigger than the need for appreciation.

Many famous painters fall into this category. They really loved what they did that they did it despite money and popularity. Many of their paintings become famous and expensive only after their death.

Doing something that somehow matters (passing one question) is not easy. But doing something that really matters is even much harder.

How to Stop Worrying

Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow – it empties today of strength.

Corrie ten Boom

You need to know how to stop worrying if you want to live life to the fullest. Why? Because worry doesn’t do you any good. It won’t help you live a better life. It won’t make you feel better and more energized. Instead, it will make you less happy and less productive.

But how can we do that? How can we stop worrying? How to stop worrying Here are eight ways:

1. Focus on what you can control

Thinking about things you can’t control puts unnecessary burden on your mind. For example, why should you worry about how bad the economy is? There’s nothing you can do about it unless you are a key person in the government. No matter how much you think about it, nothing will change. So instead of worrying about it, focus on things you can control like building your network and increasing your value. Don’t worry about things you can’t do anything about.

2. Use your imagination positively

Worry is a misuse of imagination.
Dan Zadra

Your imagination is a double-edged sword. You can use it to dream big dreams and keep your motivation high, but you can also use it to discourage yourself. People often worry about something because they fill their imagination with all the bad things that might happen. The reality is often not that bad, but it looks worse and worse because they give it too much attention.

3. Expect good things to happen

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin

Not only should you use your imagination positively, but also you should expect good things to happen in your life. Instead of expecting something to fail, expect it to succeed. Instead of expecting people not to like you, expect them to like you. You should be realistic, of course, but always expect to be a winner in life.

4. Accept responsibility

You might make mistakes in the past and worry about the consequences. In this case, the solution is to accept responsibility. Don’t let your worry drag you down. Accept the responsibility and move on. You still have a lot of great things waiting for you.


5. Be grateful

It’s easy to focus on the few things that could go wrong that we forget about the many things that already go right. That’s why having an attitude of gratitude is important. It keeps your perspective in balance. It makes you realize that for one thing that goes wrong there are many more things that go right. Just start with these simple things to be grateful for.

6. Run your own race

Stop comparing yourself with other people. Comparing yourself with others will only drain your mental energy. You have your own race to run. Instead of comparing yourself with others, focus on being the best that you can be.

7. Simplify your life

The simpler your life is, the fewer things you could worry about. So instead of doing a lot of things, focus on the few things that are most fulfilling and give you the most return for your time and effort. Find your life purpose and use the 80/20 rule to choose the few important activities to focus on.

8. Have faith

You should focus on things you can control. But what about things you can’t control? What can we do to eliminate any worry about them? The answer here is faith. You need to believe that everything will go well no matter how bad it might seem. You need to believe that everything will come out better in the end. Having faith eliminates a lot of worries in your life. It gives you peace of mind.

How To Get Good Luck

Lately I have been playing online Zynga texas holdem poker on facebook, and I get really lucky so I have been wondering what gives us good luck in life this is what I came up with.

What do you think it takes to get good luck?  There are many opinions on this. One popular one is to prepare yourself so that you will be in the right position to capitalize on opportunities when they come. This is summarized in a Louis Pasteur’s quote that says “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”

 But there’s an interesting take on it that I found recently in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. There the author gives a simple tip to get good luck: be generous. You should be generous if you want to be lucky. In other words, you should make other people feel lucky to be around you.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Here are three reasons why:

1. The quality of the people around you reflects your quality
Twyla Tharp is a choreographer and this is what she writes: To be a great choreographer (or teacher), you have to invest everything you have in your dancer… Without that generosity, you’ll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it.

2. People will reciprocate
Reciprocation is one of the weapons of influence described in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. The law of reciprocation is wired into us. Whenever someone does something good for us, we feel obliged to give back to her. The more you are generous, the more people are willing to reciprocate and the more opportunities will come your way.

3. You will be known as a value provider
Not only will the people whom you help feel obliged to reciprocate, but they may also tell their friends about you. They may tell their friends about how much value they get from you. That will attract these friends to come to you. They may then tell their friends and it becomes viral. All these people attracted to you means more opportunities for you.

Here are two things you should do to apply this principle:

1. Increase your value
Before you can give to others, you need to have something you can give. You need to have something that make other people want to come to you. If you have nothing, how can people feel lucky to be around you? So work hard to increase your value. Build your expertise in the field you choose and expand your network. Coincidentally, it means that you are also preparing for opportunities. By wanting to be generous you build yourself a “prepared mind.”

2. Share without holding back
Now that you have something worth sharing, what you need to do is sharing it without holding back. It may take practice to do that, but over time you will feel more and more comfortable to share what you know. Again, the key here is not just to give but to be generous.

How To Utilize The Power Of Words

"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. watch your character; it becomes your destiny." — Frank Outlaw

 We use words all the time, we use them to convey our ideas to other people and influence them. Countless leaders used words to motivate people and to ultimately cause them to behave in a certain way. What we aren’t always aware of is that words are influencing us the moment we utter them.

Did you know that Eskimos have more then one word to describe snow? It is believed that snow plays a bigger part in their lives, they have more experiences regarding it and therefore more words to describe it. You can learn a lot just from listening to someone else talk. For example if he uses the word fear or anxiety a lot it means that it’s probably a big part of his experience.

We all know how changing our job title to something like manager can improve our feelings even if we do the same job and earn the same salary. The only thing changed was the name that gave us a feeling of importance. When we feel better we are likely to preform better.

Words created a lot of our beliefs and they can also reveal them. For instance if someone says “I’m that way because…” or “if you go out without a coat you’ll catch a cold” they’re expressing their beliefs. Lets do a little experiment, say the word fear for 30 seconds. How do you feel? Are you afraid? To cancel the negative effect say the word love for a minute.

This exercise shows us that by changing our words we can instantly change how we feel and thus change how we act. I want to clarify that words just like emotions are an energy form they aren’t good or bad, However some words will assist you to achieve what you desire and others won’t.

Different people use different words to describe the same situations and therefore they experience different emotions which causes them to act differently. What changed wasn’t the event but rather the words they used.

When we use a certain word it becomes our experience even if it wasn’t at the beginning. We categorize our emotions to ease our thinking process, However by doing so we force the category on the emotion. For example if you felt uncomfortable and you called it fear it will become fear.

One of the reasons that people become similar to their friends and people that they spend a lot of time with is because they begin to use their friends words. Moreover If you don’t have a way of representing something then you can’t experience it. In some native American cultures there isn’t a word for lying, The concept simply doesn’t exist. As a result they never lie.
Words to use

In order to change our lives we need to know what words to use instead of the “negative” ones. In addition just like some of the native Americans we need to completely omit certain words from our vocabulary.

Instead of I hate something use I prefer something else. Instead of I fear something use I feel uncomfortable or excited when this happens. Instead of saying I’m angry say I’m slightly bothered. When someone asks you how do you feel or how do you do instead of saying OK you can say excellent or wonderful, That will surely change how you feel.

Instead of saying it stinks say it’s a little smelly. Instead of disappointment use delay. Instead of lonely use available. Instead of failure say feedback or learning. Instead of depression say not really at my peak.

These are just some of the examples you can use. Make it a game, play with it and try to come up with funny and positive alternatives. It will help you moderate your negative feelings and increase the positive. This doesn’t mean that you will never feel anger or fear, these emotions are useful in certain situations. It means that anger and fear won’t be your first choice.

What exactly is a winning team?

I believe that every leader should strive to build a team that possesses the following three qualities of greatness:
Effectively achieving set objectives
This is the most basic requirement — getting the job done. The necessary conditions for this are cohesiveness, competence, and accountability of the team.


* Cohesiveness is essential for excellent team performance. Let’s say we want to put together a team of 10. What we want to see is that the team results will be much more than simply a sum of individual effort. Cohesive teams achieve that through sharing and building on each other’s strengths. Disjointed teams actually do worse than that because of the costs of coordination (meetings… you can tell how bad things are just by the amount of meetings an organization holds daily).

* Competence is an obvious point, but it is often confused with narrowly defined criteria for the immediate job at hand, applied to all team members equally.

* The sense of accountability motivates and sets an important framework (ethical, financial, strategic, tactical etc), within which the team makes everyday decisions. It is unmatched in power which it exerts on our performance and no coercion, no prospect of profit (material or not) come close in effectiveness.

A leader would be remiss if she relied on these conditions to occur automatically, yet how often do we see exactly that, management lamenting about their staff’s shortcomings without any attempts to rectify them? Too often!

Innovative

Superb teams develop and prosper through innovation. This is especially important in the era of globalization when the competition is fierce and the pressure to minimize costs is often overwhelming. Why can’t this team’s work be done as well, but cheaper, elsewhere? This question never comes up if your team’s innovative spirit is seen as a great asset, a jewel within the organization.

Enjoyable

We spend perhaps half of our waking hours with our colleagues. If this is unpleasant, so is a half of our life. To me personally, this isn’t an option. As a leader, I also understand that only those teams that are enjoyable to be a part of, are sustainable in the long run.
What to aim for (and why this is not happening)

Does my take on winning teams sound reasonable? Many more points can be discussed and added, of course, but the important question I would like to answer at this point is this: what qualities should one look for in people to create a winning team as described above?

Here are seven key qualities I look for. I can easily develop everything else, such as technical skills, communication, and domain knowledge. I have little control over these innate virtues.


#1 Intelligence: Nothing beats raw intelligence, the ability to think clearly, to frame one’s thoughts, to use appropriate examples, to abstract. Intelligent people create intelligent solutions. Intelligent people are interesting to work with.

The problem with traditional hiring today is that people are pre-selected for interviews based on some arbitrary measure of experience in the industry (why five years and not three or seven?) or the stated knowledge of a tool or technology (is your resume not full of buzzwords?). But how often do you see the requirement of intelligence?

#2 Integrity: As leaders, we put our utmost trust in people. As the experience of many political leaders suggests (President Obama’s effort in putting the Cabinet together is the most recent), integrity is not to be taken for granted and its lack in a subordinate can be very damaging indeed.

#3 Enthusiasm: Another powerful internal motivator, it cannot be taught. It is, however, said to be contagious. The upbeat take on life, events, and adversity is essential in today’s environment.

#4 Curiosity: The drive to learn, challenge, question, and try to understand is incredibly important if the team’s performance, growth, and the ability to innovate is of any significance at all. I don’t know how to develop it in someone lacking it. Do you?

#5 Diversity: One of the fallacies of hiring is approaching it as if people were screws — state the length, the diameter, the head shape, and the type of the thread, and expect them all to be the same for the immediate project at hand.

This approach is demeaning for the candidate and limiting (possibly, damaging) for the organization. Recently, an IT executive lamented on his efforts to find a job after being laid off. It seems, he said, that 20 years of diverse experience, solid leadership, and great results are not as important as whether he managed a particular system. This is the reality.

I look for people with complimentary skills and experiences, which not only make the team so much more powerful in terms of the breadth of collective knowledge, it also encourages teamwork and learning (we all need each other), and creates a team that delivers much more than a multiple of the individual effort.

#6 Teamwork. There is a small proportion of the population unable to work in a group. They may be great at what they do, highly intelligent, and have solid values, but it’s a team we are building, right?

#7 Sociability: What kind of people do you like to work with? Friendly, helpful, with a sense of humor? So do I.