It’s been a glorious month of sunny, warm weather in Glasgow. Sunshiney people, shiny and happy indeed, abound. Spring has arrived in full force, seemingly having gone from a tentative emerging to abundant bounteous beauty in about two weeks. And I am full of the joys of sun, spring, greenness….and yet am talking about failure.
Ho hum, as Winnie the Pooh would say (one of my heroes.)
I am not very observant about the world around me, as I noted recently in our discussions about creativity.
But I do notice what people say.
And this past week, several different incidences of people setting themselves up for failure have caught my attention.
Do you relate to any of these?
Pre-emptive lowering of expectations in anticipation of failure
The context is exams of course, following on from last week’s musings. It goes something like this: studying and hard work are taking place. But just in case, lets minimise everyone’s expectations of good results so as to cushion the blow when the inevitable happens. This approach of course is not new (and is most irritating coming from those who always do spectacularly well but continue to put themselves and their achievements down….you can think of someone like that I have no doubt).
The problem with this approach is that it shuts down possibility thinking and often becomes self-fulfilling. In minimising our own expectations of ourselves, negativity and self doubt take over, occupying mental space that we could be accessing for knowledge that is tucked away in there. Anxiety and worry become little prophets of doom, wasting time and energy that could instead by focused on concentrating, careful planning and positive choices to think creatively.
Listening to internal negative tapes of failure
Ghastly, this one. And horribly common. Internal mind worms play in our heads – “you’ll never change” “you’ll never be as good as….” “you’ll never amount to much” “there’s no point, you always give up anyway”.
Sometimes, we can trace those mind worms back to an actual person who said those words to us – perhaps at school, perhaps at work, perhaps in anger or hurt. It can feel that they have a total hold over us, and we are trapped under the weight of that.
But we are not. We and we alone have the power to choose how we respond to what is said to us.
We can choose instead to see who we are and what we can do, rather than be crippled by who we are not and what we can’t. Start small: What do you know to be true of yourself that is positive? What evidence is there for overcoming challenges in the past? Note past achievements. Be grateful for small things each day. And gradually replace those tapes with positive self-belief based on the truth of who you are.
Paralysed into inertia because of fear of failure
Overthinking, over-analysing, seeking advice and wise counsel from everyone and your granny – but failing to actually make a decision and take action. This is perhaps rooted in the need for everything to be perfect before you make a start. All the ducks need to be neatly lined up in a row, all the information gathered, all options carefully assessed and scrutinised. But the problem here is that there is no end to this. Eventually, you have to do something. It may well not be perfect, but it is a first step that can then be followed by another. And another. And progress is finally made.
Equally, a twin fear here is that a perfect end result is created in our minds. But because we know our own inability to achieve that, we therefore fail to start because that prevents disappointment, guilt and shame at not reaching that perfect end point.
The trick here is to see that there is no such thing as perfect. No-one can achieve perfect, and therefore we are setting ourselves up for failure by comparing ourselves with an unrealistic and unattainable goal.
Again, this is about choice. What can I do here? What would be a good result, and what can I contribute to that?
[For more thoughts on this, see this post that seemed to resonate with many.]
What do all of these approaches have in common? And what would be the impact of a success-based outlook instead? This is where we will go next week.
Meantime: pay attention this week to ways you might – consciously or not – set yourself up for failure. How would your life be different if you set yourself up to succeed instead?