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hey this is Leo for actualised dialogue and in this quick self-help segment we are going to talk about fear failure and how to overcome it so I'm going to give you some quick and practical techniques and insights for how to really deal with the fear of failure alright so what is the fear of failure let's talk about that for a second fear of failure is basically something that every one of us has this is what holds every one of us back from living a charged kind of life from living to our full potential because fact is that the world is dangerous there are things out there that we need to look out for and that in our biology in our psychology through hundreds and thousands of years of evolution what has happened is that we've been programmed with just ways of thinking and dealing with situations in fearful ways because fear is a very good quick hit of stimulation that gets you to change your behavior and that is kind of like the carrot and stick model of motivation and that's how our reptilian brain works is that when you're faced with a real danger when you're walking through the jungle and all of a sudden you see a tiger then you've got literally a physical response happening in your brain and you're especially in your reptilian brain that is just taking over all of you and it is sending you into action that's the flight-or-fight response and all of a sudden you're geared you're motivated within a split second you're filled with adrenaline and you're off you're running away or you're grabbing a stick to fend off the tiger or whatever you're doing that's totally natural and that's the environment we grew up in because we've evolved through millions of years of survival of the fittest right it is kind of a dog-eat-dog world but actually now that we're living in a more humane society where we don't have to be at each other's throats all the time that fear is still present and we still have all these fears that grip us but in fact the dangers are not nearly as great as as they were and what happens is this fear paralyzes it holds us back and makes us very very conservative and safety minded rather than growth minded and so we become afraid of trying new things and fear of failure is basically an aspect of that what I was talking about but also ties in with with perfectionism right it's thinking that when you do something that it's gonna have to go well it's gonna have to be perfect and then if it's not and somehow you failed and somehow that's like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you I feel very qualified to talk about this topic because I have a lot of fear of failure still even though I've done years and years of personal development work and I've studied so many numerous techniques and strategies and ideas about this stuff fact is that it's really hard to get rid of fear of failure entirely it's something you have to chip away at slowly as slowly and slowly and the best way to really deal with fear of failure is one to put yourself in a position where you're relatively safe and secure so if you're really in a dangerous and hostile environment not just in your mind but I mean really in a hostile environment like if you were in in some poor country in Africa where you really face a danger of getting your arms chopped off with a machete that's a hostile environment you living in a suburb in the United States it's not a hostile environment so if you're not really hostile environment then you have to definitely handle that but if you're living in a in a comfortable sort of secure environment that most of us live in in a first world country then the fear of failure is largely your mind play tricks on you and what it's doing is it's looking at your past childhood and it's looking at those experiences and your subconscious mind is bringing forward the things that you're afraid of the most and for everybody that's gonna be slightly different so maybe you were raised in a family where you were always told that you have to be a certain way otherwise you're not going to be loved and so now you have a real fear of of disappointing people and so there's a real fear that if you don't live up to be able to expectations they didn't feel like you failed and that you are unlovable or remember you grew up in a family situation where you didn't have a lot of money and so the thing that was instilled in you was the fear that you're gonna be poor and broke and now you're an adult and even if you have a relatively good amount of money in your bank account you might still be walking around and holding this this limiting belief or holding this image in your mind in your subconscious mind this powerful image that one day if you don't handle all your affairs correctly you're gonna wind up like that bum on the street and your mind comes up with all sorts of stories and excuses for why that's true and in fact if you have that if you have that fear right now then you're probably sitting there and saying well leo it is true if I don't go to work if I don't handle my affairs I am going to be a bum on the street so yes technically it's true in that sense but the problem is and the problem with this whole fear of failure is that really it's a mechanism that has become dysfunctional fear can be functional in propria tiger in the jungle example that was a very appropriate reaction to fear where it's not appropriate is most likely how its functioning in your life right because it's keeping you for pursuing your full potential it's keeping you in your comfort zone so for example maybe you feel like you should step it up at work and go ask for that promotion or maybe ask for a raise but you have a fear of failure well what if I go and I ask for that raise and they tell me no that's gonna feel horrible I'm gonna get rejected and what if what if not only do they not did then I give me the raise but what if they tell me that they're firing me now because I was too bold and going up and asking for a raise well see what's happening there is you're creating this worst-case scenario and what's happening at your lower self that very conservative side of you is is taking that scenario of you being a bum on the street and it's magnifying it and it's it's having you it's having you just like spill into every aspect of your life in all thinking in all the thinking that you do about your life and what that's doing is it's holding you back because the fact is that yes there might be some risk in going and asking for promotion but on the hand how do you want to live your life do you want to live your life in cost and failure or do you want to live your life going out there and pushing your comfort zone trying new things here's the trick about failure is that failure is actually good failure is not as bad as your mind makes it out to be failure is how really successful people get successful it's something that are born successful is that they go through a process of trial and error making lots of mistakes failing many times to learn those hard lessons to get those lessons wired into their brains and then they can have the success that they have because they've tried it all they fail so many times they don't care anymore that's kind of what you need to do is you need to numb yourself down to this idea that failure is bad it's not bad in fact I can bet you that if I was with you right now 101 and I asked you tell me about a time in your life where you really really struggled a lot and you failed a lot and you still kept with it but you failed so any time you just tried so many times you kept failing and failing and failing and failing but you just kept with it and you just kept with it and you just kept with it what we'll probably find is that that actually led to something very positive in your life because what happened through that process that you learned something through that failure process eventually you came out with some new insight you came out with some new skill set you came out with some new asset that you created or maybe a relationship that sprung out of that something positive and that came out of the direct result that you got understanding by doing this trial and this trial and error process and that is how learning happens through failure when a little child starts to learn how to walk what does he do he doesn't he doesn't say to himself well what if I fail what if I take that force evidence at work he's not cautious of that at all if he had that kind of mindset none of us would ever walk fortunately enough when you're at that age you're in your instincts kind of just kick in and you start walking you start experimenting but you see them what you see them doing is you see them struggling and trying and falling down and going again and again and again but they're getting enjoyment out of it and it's kind of like a game it's like a fun challenge right fun challenge they're trying it out even though maybe sometimes they land on their ass they get hurt they get bruised they slip they chip a tooth whatever knock their head on on a bench but like they're learning through that process and that that's necessary so this idea that you fear failing in your career and your business and your relationship so what so what if you fail nothing that bad is gonna happen right and think about it if a friend came to you right now and he was really really anxious and neurotic about failing on some some project that he's working on or like really screwing up a conversation with somebody or giving a speech and like making a fool of himself or whatever else what would you tell him you tell them exactly what I'm telling you is you tell them you know how important is it in the grand scheme of things if you if you bomb that test if you bomb that relationship if you if you bomb that speech if you bomb your marriage it's really not that important and some of these things I want to make sure that I'm being clear here I'm not just saying little things I'm saying all things I specifically said something like a marriage because a marriage is a is a big thing and most people would say well you don't want to bomb your marriage and I'm not saying that you should deliberately but I'm saying that in the end you're going to do your best and your best sometimes isn't good enough sometimes you need to learn through the school of hard knocks and sometimes bombing that marriage is exactly what needs to happen to you and you know what there's nothing that bad about it in the end you're making out to be too big of a deal and you know this because if I came to you with the same problem you would say you know what there's a bright side to it you'll learn something you'll know how to create a better marriage maybe you'll find out that you're better off alone whatever it's not that big of a deal if you fail you can't hold yourself to this perfectionistic standard and so that's basically the bottom line and I think that if you want that exciting kind of life if you want to go and undertake this process of self actualization as I call it then you have to be willing to fail and you have to be willing to accept some risk and going out there doing stuff otherwise what's gonna happen is you're like a bird in a cage you're going nowhere you can't get out of the cage you don't want to get out of the cage even if the door is opened you still feel comfortable in the cage and how can you grow how can you really live how can you experience life you can't and that's why your life is average it's boring it's mediocre you don't have really good results in finances or in relationships or anywhere else because you're in a cage we don't want that and the best way to get out of that cage is to make the choice for growth versus the comfort Abraham Maslow talks about this he's kind of the father of self-actualization he talks about that every day you get little choices and the choice is always between growth and comfort so for example when you wake up in the morning do you push the snooze alarm that's comfort or do you force yourself to get up and do what you got to do that's growth do you grab the doughnut or the the healthy piece of fruit or salad at lunch you know that's again a choice between comfort and growth and do you go and you raise your hand at the group meeting and you voice your concerns that's growth or do you tell yourself to sit down and shut up and be meek that's comfort so you get these little decision points every single day we all get them dozens of them and the more you can you can go with the choice of growth versus comfort that's air that's every day you're doing that it's a little snap a little step a little step towards breaking out of your shell at your comfort zone out of your cage and that is ultimately how you become self actualized and that is how you defeat and overcome the fear of failure all right this is Leah I'm going to be signing off please post me some comments I'd love to hear what you think about this topic and then of course please like this and share it so this message spreads and go check out actualized org where you get more advanced personal development tips just like this where we really cover fear in all aspects to a much deeper degree sign up to my newsletter and you'll get all those videos every time that I post new updates it's all free you