Why are we afraid to fail and what to do about it?

A few days ago, was my daughter’s kindergarten summer celebration. The celebration was big, and it was organized in the city hall, where there is a stage so that the kids can perform and sing.

During that day she woke up early in the morning and I saw her laughing, playing, and singing at home. This was nothing abnormal.

But for me as an adult, I was wondering how we-when we were kids-could take anything easily without pressure or fear of failure.

Why she was able to do so? This is mainly because of two reasons:

1- Her lack of awareness. In other words, she didn’t care what others will think or say about her action of going on stage and singing or dancing.

2- Lack of association because she never associated what she is planning to do on stage with embarrassment or what will happen if things went wrong.

Unfortunately, we were all born like this, not worried about doing things that make us happy, until we got conditioned by society.

''You are a failure'', ''you are stupid'', ''you will be a loser'', ''do you remember the last time when you messed up everything?''. These are just some examples of what we used to hear as we started making more sense of the world and taking different actions.

I started wondering, how many times have we stopped ourselves from doing great things because we were afraid to fail?

Or how many times we did not step up and make our voices heard because we were afraid of criticism or that we may look stupid?

Or even how many times we wanted to pursue a dream that we were thinking about day and night because we were afraid of what our best friends or family members would say?

And let me tell you this. Most of the time when we are afraid to fail, it is not mainly because of the failure itself, it is mainly because we are afraid of how others will see us if we failed.

So, I want you to do something for me, please. Can you imagine for some moments what your life may look like if you stopped caring about what others will say about what you are doing?

Others will think about you for a maximum of 1 minute per day if they even thought about you each day. Do you want to neglect your dream or goal because of someone who will think about you for 1 min per day or per week?

And regarding negative associations, always think about something good or a challenging situation that you passed successfully in your past. Think about this situation carefully and remember its details and how you felt proud after passing or surviving it.

Synchronize this good memory with a specific action that you can do like touching your ear or pressing your thumb. And when you start feeling pressure or thinking negatively, make this action or reminder in order to stop your negative thought pattern and direct your mind to focus on the things that you really want to focus on.

Try this exercise several times and be patient regarding your expectations.

Now I want to read your opinions. Let me know in the comments section below if there are any other techniques or strategies that you usually use to stop the flow of negative thoughts when you are under pressure.

Share with me your experience and see you in the next article.