Shifting Your Relationship to Fear & Failure or Perfectionism.

We're taught that if we fail, it's a bad thing. The educational system and how we were raised—especially if you're from a traditional culture—you'll know what I'm talking about. No need to blame; just in a matter-of-fact way, failure and doing things in a very specific way were really conditioned into us.

So, a lot of us don't have a really great relationship with failure.

Yet, failure—trial and error over and over again (and we can approach it with lightheartedness) until it becomes trial and success—is the nature of how we learn and expand.

The ability to shift your relationship with failure and move through the fear, to even be able to do something that you know will absolutely fail, or get rejected, but notice that you'll be okay, is really the topic of this video.

When you become okay with failure and see it as a necessary part of the process, that becomes a catalyst for creating momentum in any of the tasks or projects that you're wanting to move forward with.

Because if you can proactively do something that you're certain you'll fail at, move through it, and notice what shows up, and notice that you're okay, something inside of you will open to far more possibilities.

And I know there's this whole thing about you never really fail until you give up. And I get it, that's true. However, I don't want to sugarcoat it in this blog. As that's often used as a crutch to avoid the realities of life and soften the blow on the ego. But for anyone who's actually moved through resistance, fear, failure, setbacks, and mistakes, you'll know that if we take it really personally, just how much it sucks. And that's okay.

So, what often shows up as a mask for fear of failure or moving through resistance is "I don't know what to do."

In my own experience and what I've noticed in my clients is "I don't know what to do," or the feeling that you can't access your creativity, like even to sit down and brainstorm or try something out, is really because of fear and resistance. Resistance shows up, and there is a habitual thought pattern of "I just don't know what to do."

And there are many strategies to move through this. But, at the core of it, it's really fear, resistance, and a lack of willingness to really examine what's going on.

And to make things worse, we feel a lot of guilt and shame for not moving forward on our projects, so instead, we make ourselves do busy work, or work that doesn't really move the needle forward.

And that's the worst feeling—feeling like you're always busy and that you have so many burdens—just so you don't feel bad about not doing the key activities that you know will provide the most leverage in your life. Essentially not doing what you know you must be doing, but feeling the burden of "I've got so much stuff going on, I'm so busy." But my life isn't actually going anywhere.

Here's a tip.

If you know what to do, do it. If you don't know what to do, don't.

Let me explain.

You actually do know what to do. You're just not looking at your life in an honest, real, and raw way. If someone put a gun to your head and said, "You need to move the needle forward on your projects; otherwise, I'm going to pull the trigger," you think you'd still not know what to do? Or procrastinate? No, you'd figure it out right away. Because the fear of no longer existing will be far greater than the resistance you feel to actually examine your life or the resistance to the action itself.

So here are some of the fears, failures, and resistance I encountered along my own hero's journey that include and are not limited to:

E.g. Starting my own Personal Training studio in Taipei, Posting my services online to get clients, creating & editing my website, starting an Instagram page for fitness and then coaching, making/posting videos & anything related to the personal development journey. Sitting down to just write my insights and not even post. Applying for jobs back before I was an entrepreneur, etc. Having tough conversations with my leader or my staff.

Instead of taking action on these tasks, I would procrastinate with just endless studying. And yes, that is a form of procrastination. Staying within the comforts of knowledge but never actually applying it.

So again, "I don't know what to do" is an avoidance of the things you know you should be doing, or an avoidance of simply sitting down to examine what's really going on, or even to brainstorm because we can even have a fear around not getting the brainstorming part of things right. You know, the perfectionism stuff.

The thing about brainstorming is not to get it right; it's all about getting your creative juices flowing. So, this is why shifting your entire approach or relationship with failing, not getting things right, or perfect is crucial along the developmental path. Because without it, there won't be a developmental path. It'll just be the comfort of the known, the comfort of what you know you can do. And if you can already do it, it's a task, but it won't move the needle forward for you. It's the stuff that scares you that really brings about the lessons in life.

Now, if you really don't know what to do, don't do anything that impulsively feels like busywork. There's no need to force yourself into doing something that you know won't move the needle forward in order to appear busy or feel less guilty.

In fact, this is a great opportunity to examine and investigate resistance itself. What's going on up here? What am I avoiding? Like, what am I really avoiding? Or what am I really afraid of?

And you'll see it's one of a few things: fear of failure, fear of being seen, fear of success, fear of not getting it right, fear of being judged, fear of the unknown or uncertainty, etc., etc.

And this is where grounding and grounding practices come into play.

But even with or without grounding, you're still going to have to move through resistance. There's really no way around it. You're going to have to feel the fear and do it anyway in order to overcome distractions, habitual patterns of procrastination, and build that momentum that comes from those small wins, those incremental steps.

Now, are there ways to reduce the mind-created mental noise so that moving through resistance becomes a lot more approachable or palatable? Yes, with grounding.

But also, approach your ambitions one step at a time. Taking baby steps. Shifting your relationship with fear and failing and actually proactively doing things that you know you'll fail at and be rejected

Will Really Help With That

So I'm just going to muck around, but let's think of a few examples.

Ask for a massive discount in a store, ask a close friend to give you a kiss as an experiment, go up to the most attractive person you see and ask for their number and if you can take them out on a date.

Here's one of my own experiences with coaching. Ask a person that you know would have no interest in coaching, personal development, or being coached if they'd be interested in a coaching session and they have to pay first. I actually did that one. It was pretty funny.

But yeah, there was a resounding "No!" And a lot of awkwardness, and it felt brilliant.

Anyway, I'm just throwing spaghetti on the wall. Make up your own experiments.

So, next:

Brainstorm, muck around. When we approach a task or project with the nature of fun and we take all the seriousness out of it—like what it means about us and how important it is to our sense of self and where we are in life—we just relax and have fun. And again, we're okay with messing it up.

The task becomes a lot more approachable, more manageable to our psyches.

And finally, just do it, just jump, just go for it.

I've taken my clients through this so many times. And although they were scared shitless in the beginning, what they realized is that after they did the thing, it wasn't anywhere near as scary as their mind made it out to be.

So, as you begin to play around with different approaches, muck around—

You'll begin to find staples of activities or your own structures that'll get the creative juices flowing or invigorate the life force.

Like over time, you'll settle into a daily routine which I've made a video about: workout sessions, meditation, music, writing, journaling, go-karting, hiking, cleaning the house (which I personally find very therapeutic).

And there you have it.

Go live your life, have fun, and keep moving forward.

Catch you on the next one.