FOCUS: MEN’S THRIVABILITY


Fear of failure


For me, apart from spiders and dentists (learned fears, and I think quite rational ones), my biggest issue has always been fear of failure.


by Craig Fallshaw A


n amazing thing really. ‘It’s all in your head’, they say. At the risk of sounding a bit


obvious, isn’t it all in your head? I mean this in a literal way, without


getting all Freudian. Ultimately how you feel is up to you and the way you react (fear, love, excitement, happiness) to external things, the things that happen outside you. One practitioner in my Odyssey


suggests that we are not our thoughts and feelings – but I find I am, most of the time. Fear is defined as an unpleasant


emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. The other thing it is – something that


can hold you back; something my old kinesiologist would have said is an ‘away from’ driver rather than a ‘towards’ driver. That is to say, you are motivated to do something or behave a certain way to avoid something happening. An ‘away from’ driver is reactive


(Aaah! There is a tiger. I should run.) and probably something with a negative consequence; and the towards is a


6 SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2017


premeditated, frontal lobe, higher thinking kind (I know if I work hard I can get that new car I want in six months). For me, apart from spiders and


dentists (learned fears, and I think quite rational ones), my biggest issue has always been fear of failure. Fear of failure is definitely an ‘away


from’, and I would suggest that I have spent most of my life operating in such a way as to avoid failure, which probably stems back to somewhere in my childhood as the little fat kid who thought he wasn’t good enough, could not run as fast and was absolute rubbish at sport in general. Let’s face it, when you are a kid, with your peers, these are the yardsticks by which you are measured. I think it all comes back as well to


self-confidence, the lack of which again probably stems from childhood incidents – if I fail, they will know I’m really no good, etc. So here is where the story gets really,


really interesting. As I sit here heading rapidly towards my 50s, the great irony occurs to me – it is when I have failed


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100