It's an interesting fear, because essentially it's just bullshit. For example, I have 4 children and then when they learn to walk and fall you don't say "oh, you failed you can't do anything, your brother can do it much better". No, you encourage that child to continue and even if you didn't, the child wouldn't think "well, I can't do anything and I'll just lie there for the rest of my life". No, that one gets back up and tries again.
So did you, including talking, walking, sitting and eating. But had you failed then when you couldn't eat properly? No, of course not! You just continued until you could do it and then you moved on to the next thing you could learn.
In the first 2 to 4 years, there's just no fear of failure at all. You were just learning, learning and learning.
School and fear of failure
Then you go to school, grade 1 and 2. Then there's a test. It didn't used to be that you have it now a in kindergarten. The idea is that children then get used to tests, but what actually happens is that they get used to stress. What kind of development is that? You used to only have the cito in 8th grade, but now you have it in kindergarten.
Children of 9 with burnout or depression. I also recently read a story of a girl who was already suicidal because she couldn't take it all anymore.
You didn't have that kind of excess in the past.
Because that's partly because of the performance-oriented society[1], the school that has become performance-oriented. In addition, you just want to avoid those feelings, and fear of failure can cause you to then just not take such a test. Or even quit school altogether, because then you can't fail either.
I am not against achievement. I want to perform and win myself, but I don't want to be destroyed by it. That doesn't make sense because you are learning.
Had you failed when you fell? No, did you feel like a winner when you were able to walk? Probably yes, that must have been totally awesome.
Did you feel like a loser when you found you couldn't run yet? No.
That's an incredibly important difference, when you couldn't do something it felt normal and otherwise you just felt like a winner. You couldn't feel like a loser.
We are all winners, so it is very crazy to think we are losers. We have the battle to live off all those other sperm cells and eggs as won. The chance seems to be 1 in 400 trillion that you can walk around here. A very small chance, so yes you are a winner.
Now you may not be able to feel this, but that's in your mind. How did that get in there?
These are suggestions from your parents, environment, teachers, school, your culture, but it's not in you to begin with. It is around you and you have been influenced from the outside. It has come in and those suggestions have taken hold in your brain.
But is essence doesn't belong to you. You are a winner.
Losing, that's just what's instilled in them.
The good news is that you can get it out.
Getting fear of failure out of your system
How do you get that back out there? Well then you go back to the very first moment when this feeling was put into you. Then you start thinking "gosh, since when have I had that?" and the first memory that comes up, you start changing that.
You are going to change the process.
You can even say to your younger self "hey, I feel fine" with today's awareness. You can even step into that moment. After all, to your brain, it doesn't matter if it's real or fantasy.
So you step into that moment (in your mind) and can change the situation. You can say you don't have to take that test because you're 43 now and you're just going to leave.
So are you kidding yourself? Yes you are. Because you weren't that old in kindergarten, but if you have fear of failure you are also fooling yourself, because you are a winner.
All those feelings that you are a loser is also fooling yourself.
So then you might as well keep yourself to yourself that it helps you.
So just close your eyes and think about when those feelings were there first. You could be six, sixteen, four years old. Just trust that the moment is right. Change it your way so it feels right. And repeat it as much as you can until it feels right.
Until you think you are a winner and the fear of failure is just bullshit. You're just learning and that's called life.
Also listen to this podcast.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/764374-faalangst-wat-is-het-en-hoe-kom-je-ervan-af
The technique I just mentioned is based on regression. During the training at the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands, we go deeper into this technique and how to help people see and feel the moment differently.
Being kind to yourself
Fear of failure often causes you to delay or not do certain actions. Entrepreneurs, for example, may face fear of failure, and scientific research shows that self-compassion (being kind to yourself) then helps reduce the fear of failure[2].
Just like when you talk to your former self that all is well and your tests mean nothing you can also apply meditation in which you are kind to yourself.
For example, you can get a guided meditation, or as with hypnosis, a guided visualization, about being kind to yourself. Seeing yourself as a winner and thus reducing fear of failure.
A hypnotist can help you with this. After a preliminary consultation to see what beliefs are causing fear of failure, regression can be tried first; in addition or instead, guided visualizations or other hypnotic suggestions can also be used.
You are first put into hypnosis to make the suggestions take effect as quickly as possible. Then the guided visualization begins.
"You are doing well. You are learning a lot. Everything that happens makes you more knowledgeable to achieve your goals. A goal not reached is a goal not yet reached. Uncertainties fall away from you, like a coat you drop to the ground. You shake opportunities out of your arm and grab them."
This is just one example, depending on your issues with fear of failure and the problems you want to overcome, a hypnotist may give you a different guided visualization or suggestions or actually help you with regression.
Shifting focus from failure to success
Other research on students shows that shifting the focus from fear of failure to the likelihood of success causes procrastination to be reduced and thus you take action to learn or live your life[3].
For example, what project or goal do you actually want to start, but is fear of failure holding you back? Try consciously going against it every time you have those fear thoughts with the idea that you are actually achieving success.
Instead of everything that can go wrong, just imagine everything going right. What would that look like? The process of getting everything right and then how it looks when everything has come right. How happy you are with yourself then. How proud you are of yourself and maybe even the admiration you get from people around you.
It then becomes a lot easier to get back up and move forward without fear.
Self-hypnosis against fear of failure
Research also shows, of course, that self-hypnosis can help against fear of failure[4]. The exercise I gave you at the beginning of this blog if you have done that you have already applied form of self-hypnosis to suffer less from fear of failure.
The trick to self-hypnosis is to keep repeating it, preferably daily. You can also get the guided visualization and other suggestions from a hypnosis expert on mp3 to practice self-hypnosis yourself.
The hypnotist can also help you hypnotize yourself so you can be sure to get it right.
Want to know what it feels like and how you can use it to help yourself or others? Then come to a hypnosis playshop. During the playshop you will learn in 1 day how to hypnotize people and how it feels to be under hypnosis.
At a hypnosis seminar, you will learn even more than that and also see more examples of how people can be helped with hypnosis. You too can sign up for this.
Instead, would you like to get started right away to help yourself or others with hypnosis? Then enroll in one of our training courses from the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands. The trainings are given in Wormerveer, Zwolle and online.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08985626.2013.862975/
[2] https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.11470abstract
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sari_Akmal/publication/319467147_Hope_of_Success_and_Fear_of_Failure_Predicting_Academic_Procrastination_Students_Who_Working_on_a_Thesis/links/59bc4a3b0f7e9b48a28e2411/Hope-of-Success-and-Fear-of-Failure-Predicting-Academic-Procrastination-Students-Who-Working-on-a-Thesis.pdf
[4] http://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:rjpt&volume=12&issue=4&article=087
