Dealing with the fear of failure
If fear is holding you back, there are simple ways to deal with it
Who is James Altucher? 🤔
You may not have heard of James Altucher.
Or you may have seen his phenomenal YouTube videos with millions of views or read his best-seller book ‘Choose Yourself’ or read one of his LinkedIn posts.
But these things don’t define him. Here’s what defines him, as mentioned on his website:
I’ve started 20 companies, 17 of which have failed. But I’ve learned a lot along the way.
If fear of failure is holding you back then who better a person to listen to then someone who has failed a lot and has forced his way through failures to be a best-selling author, a widely read/watched expert on mindfulness and a successful angel investor.
Dealing with the fear of failure 💪
James talks about a variety of topics in a very crisp manner in this short video (link at the end of the post) on how to deal with failure. Here are my 3 key takeaways from it
Everyone is afraid 😨
First, know this fact that everyone is afraid. People who are trying to make a mark for themselves in the face of the universe are afraid of getting rejected. People who have already arrived in life and have made millions even billions) of dollars are worried about one day losing all of it. That’s why you have all these tech billionaires secretly buying land in New Zealand and building bunkers to survive a nuclear holocaust.
Once you realize that even the people who you believe are infallible, are also afraid, it is a very mentally liberating feeling
Goals vs. themes 🎯
Goals are an extremely powerful tool to plan your life. You can set short term goals and long term goals and measure your progress against these goals. This also allows you to reflect and course-correct if you are not on track to meet your goals.
However, goals have 2 problems:
In an extremely unpredictable world (such as the current times), it is very difficult to be able to put a stake in the ground and accurately identify what your goals should be. This is more difficult for long-term goals than short-term goals
Also, goals are always like shifting goal-posts (Yes, the Football pun!). Once you have made a million dollars, you want to make 10 million dollars. Once you have 1 house, you want to have 2 houses, so that you can rent one out.
James suggests that instead of goals, we should have themes in life. For instance, instead of saying I will lose 10 KG this year (a goal), you can have a theme of eating healthier and exercising regularly.
I disagree with him here because one of the key ways to improve oneself is through feedback and to have feedback loops, you need to have a reference start point and a reference endpoint. Thus, completely removing goals from your life will definitely help in stress levels, but will also mean that you will have an anxiety of not knowing how well are you doing in your life’s theme.
Thus, I believe we need both - Themes and goals.
You need to create themes for your life, which are like dominant narratives of how you want to live your life. Some examples are:
I will be a responsible son/daughter to my parents
I will be a fully committed member of my religious community
I will create the highest possible value for my clients in every project
Within these themes, create goals so that you have a feedback loop for improvement. But before you create the goals, read the next point.
Do not time travel ⏳
One of the biggest reasons for our fear is that we are never in the moment. We are either already in the future, fervently analyzing the results of our actions today, or we are in the past, regretting the actions we did not take.
This ‘time-traveling’, is the single biggest cause of fear in our minds. And the solution to this is rather simple. If you read my post on how to apply Warren Buffet’s investment criteria to your life, you know the answer already (link to the post) - Focus on the present and think about the future only one step at a time.
This is what high-performance athletes said when interviewed. They run for 15 mins (because anyone can run for 15 mins) and then think of the next 15 mins. They swim for 3 strokes at a time and then think of the next 3 strokes.
This allows them to give their best shot to their present effort. If you noticed, these high-performance athletes all have goals (crossing the English Channel, Running Cross-Country, etc.). But because they are no time traveling, the goals are helping them move forward.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. James Altucher’s full video is shared below. It is just 5 minutes long, so do give it a spin.
Cheers
Rohit
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