Tag: fear

Fear of failure

The fear of failure is a common experience that can be changed. Everyone has fears and they exist for a reason. Fear is an important mechanism to protect us and help us deal with a potential danger. The challenge is that fear may keep us from participating fully in life and venture outside of our zone of comfort. We have to realize that fear shows up by anticipation, based on previous experiences, not only as a response to real and present danger. Fear is based on thoughts that are stored and used as data in our mind to elicit certain responses. Once we realize the mechanism, we can choose to hack our own computer of a brain, and trigger a different response. We can always generate new reactions, new brain connections by choosing new thoughts. 

What if failure was a good thing?What if failure was a way to learn and innovate, a technic to master (fail, fail and fail better), a path towards mastery. I remember thinking that failure should be taught in school. There are so many things to learn from failures. It leads to a gradual process of reconquering lost ground to be repeated over and over again towards success, like a child learning to walk – falling time and again – until he or she finds balance.

You may feel that you stand out when you fail, that all eyes are on you, and nobody could be as bad as you. These feelings are common, but you can overcome them, especially if you disconnect the fear triggered by the thought of failing. When you learn to observe your thoughts and their connections to the way you feel, you can find a way to change the feeling around the thought of failing. Think and feel the positive charge around failing. You will gain freedom, no longer ruled by the fear to fail.

Motivation will get you far

One of the leadership qualities I often lack is motivation. How many times did I approach a competition without the necessary motivation? I have often wondered and looked into motivation over the years, and I would like to share with you the formula I discovered to raise your motivation. The good news is that it is a skill that can be learned, according to some empirical research. So here is how you can shift the quality of your motivation, achieve your goals, and thrive. You need three ingredients:

1.              Create a choice: You need to perceive that you have options within boundaries and you are not obligated, but rather in control of your actions. Motivation will die the minute you feel that something is imposed on you and you are the victim. This is why diet does not work… the minute you tell yourself that you cannot have that piece of chocolate, your choice is gone and the motivation with it! To create choice, you just have to ask yourself: What choices have I made to reach this point? What choices do I have in order to move forward?

2.              Create connections: You need to connect your goals and actions to something meaningful, a sense of purpose that contributes to something greater than yourself. You will have to find a meaningful reason for pursuing that goal beyond external rewards, pressure, or fear. We all need to create connections to feel a sense of belonging and genuine relationships to others. The question here is: Why do I want to achieve this? How meaningful it is to me and others?How meaningful is it to carry on with this diet?

3.              Create competence: You need to link your goal to how this is helping you grow and learn. Competence is more than getting the job done. It is about feeling effective in managing your daily tasks, demonstrating skills over time, and a sense of growth and learning. This is why it is hard to maintain a diet. You focus on the outcome rather than the growth and learning experience, emphasizing progress, rather than beating yourself up over not being perfect. The question here is: What have I learned?

Notice when you create choice, connection, and competence, you feel a greater sense of well-being. On the flip side, when choice, connections, and competence diminish, you feel pressure, stress, and fear or frustration. You may still achieve your goal, but it will be at a high cost to your health and well-being. Whether you wish to lose weigh, prepare your tax return, get a new job, or stop a bad habit, you need motivation! This is one aspect of leadership in your life.

Leading from emotions

Today I want to talk about something controversial. When I developed my Creative Leadership Program, I had an interesting conversation with my coach about leading from a place of vulnerability. Indeed, among leaders and leadership coaches, the idea of leading through emotions is highly controversial. After all, ever since the century of Enlightenment, the mind is meant to be in the lead, not emotions. I have experienced a very different approach, which might serve the leaders of tomorrow.

Why did emotions get such a negative reputation? I wondered about this for a while and came to the conclusion that emotions, especially negative ones like anger, sadness, or frustration, can prompt us to lose control of our emotional state, hence this negative judgment. Indeed, powerful emotions can lead us to explode with little control over the consequences. Yet, have you ever observed the surge of energy that comes with anger or frustration, or the depth that surges with sadness? I would suggest tapping into this magma of energy to lead the way and saddle at the helm of our lives.

How, you might ask? Indeed, harnessing the power of our emotions at the height of their expression can prove difficult. This is where leadership skills are needed. We have that innate ability to feel the power of our emotions and transform that energy into healthy ways of expressing it. I have noticed how anger and sadness–possibly the two poles of the same energy–can be transformed into a source of inspiration towards bringing about the change we want to see in the world. It is no accident that having accumulated significant anger and sadness over decades, I came to develop a program on “Be the Change You Want to See” as a way to make a contribution to the world.

Similarly, you may be able to transform feelings of frustration and stress towards thinking outside of the box. Creative thinking and writing are often the result of frustrations about the way things are, and a way to discover solutions to what originally left us stymied. Perhaps the most challenging emotion to transform might be fear. The need to feel the fear and stay with it allows us to re-examine our circumstances rather than flee and find a different angle, likely to give us unexpected insight into our life.

Where might this transformative process lead us? I would venture to say that this type of leadership is based on the power to redirect the flood of emotions we all experience in life daily towards productive, artistic, or laborious pursuits. I might add that channeling our emotions into constructive action can also prevent us from re-creating and re-living the situation, event, or expectation that originally prompted us to feel negative. Essentially, this is the type of leadership that transforms the negative and spins it into positive by harnessing the energy of negative emotions. Could it be a way out of emotional pain? Indeed, pain is no longer fed by our intellectual and emotional energy once the energy is re-used and transformed. It quickly ebbs away. This type of leadership is neither conceptual nor intellectual. It is rooted in the practice of honestly acknowledging and honoring our feelings, leading from a place of vulnerability.