SUCCEEDING Through Fears and Failures

Hey There Friend!

Have you ever REALLY wanted to do something but when you had the opportunity to do it, you didn’t take it? 

Have you ever worked super hard at something only to "mess up" when you had the chance to DO the thing you prepared long and hard to do?

Has someone ever told you that you aren’t capable of doing something you want to do because you aren’t smart enough, big enough, small enough, fast enough, popular enough, pretty enough?

You get the picture right, the list could go on and on and on!

How would you respond if you had the chance to WIN the game for your team and didn't get it done?

Michael Jordan "didn't get it done" 26 times in his career. That’s how many times he missed a last second shot that kept his team from winning the game.

Oh, by the way, did you know that he was cut from his high school basketball team because his coach didn’t think he was good enough to be part of that team? 

What if you wrote a book that you worked incredibly hard on and believed was good, but it had it rejected by a publisher? 

Dr. Seuss’s 1st book was rejected by publishers 27 times.

Can you imagine a world without the "Cat in the Hat" OR "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" or whatever your favorite Dr. Seuss book happens to be!

What if you designed something new and innovative, only to have your prototype fail? 

James Dyson, invented the 1st bag-less vacuum cleaner. It took him 5 years and 5126 FAILED prototypes to do it!

What if someone told you that you didn’t have the “right look” to pursue your passion of being on television?

Oprah Winfrey heard that many times and went on to have one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL television careers in history and have a net worth of $2.7 BILLION!

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln lost 8 elections in his political career before becoming president?

So why are some people able to push through failure and rejection so well and others give up so easily? 

Failure is hard and when we experience it once, we often FEAR it happening to us again. That FEAR can keep us from doing hard things and THIS is where the problems begin!

Let’s take a look at the SCIENCE behind FEAR.

I just learned this information a couple years ago and it has CHANGED how I think AND how I communicate with my students!

Our ability to recognize fear and respond to it is hard wired into us to PROTECT us from danger and help us survive.

The AMYGDALA, also known as our LIZARD brain, is REALLY good at it’s job! 

If you are hitting and the pitcher throws a pitch at your head, your lizard brain tells you to duck and get out of the way. 

If you are hiking and see a snake, your lizard brain tell you to stop (or scream if you are me) and choose a new path. 

But YOUR lizard brain is so good at it’s job that it can’t differentiate between BAD fear like a ball coming at you or snake in your path AND good fear that comes when we attempt to venture outside of our comfort zone.  

Our lizard brain will always try and make us chose the safe, the easy and the comfortable route because it doesn’t know the differences between the good risks that come with uncertainty, attention, struggle and change and the dangerous ones! 

FEAR is the #1 enemy to learning and doing.

When we feel fear we automatically try to find a way to avoid whatever it is that makes us uncomfortable and this robs us of experiences, opportunities and action. 

It’s why some of us BELIEVE people when they say we aren’t good enough, it will involve struggle and change to prove them wrong!

It’s why some of us won’t ask questions in class, because when we do, it draws ATTENTION to us, and we are UNCERTAIN what people will think of us!

It’s why we choose to get on our phone and check social media instead of spending a few minutes WORKING on something. Sitting on the couch is less struggle than doing the thing we should be doing that will help us get where we want to go!

It’s why when we practice, we like to do things we are already good at, NOT what we NEED to improve. The stuff we NEED to do involves us changing something. CHANGE often involves a struggle AND we are uncertain when we will see results! 

All of these avoidance responses are GOOD when it comes to DANGER but HORRIBLE when it comes to GROWTH and LEARNING! 

So the question is “How do we CONQUER fear?” 

And the ANSWER: We don’t!  

What researchers found is that the more one tries to destroy, defeat or conquer fear, the HARDER the lizard brain works to keep you SAFE from what it views as the dangerous thing that is happening to you.

Your lizard brain causes your heart to race, your palms to sweat and those butterflies to get crazy in your stomach.  We ALL know those feelings and the things that trigger them for us.

The next time that you experience fear, nervousness, or anxiety to do something, INSTEAD of trying to AVOID those emotions, and attempt to be “fearless,”  remind yourself that feeling those emotions is NORMAL and all it means is that you are human! 

Those physical reactions we have, like butterflies in our stomach, are our signal something BIG is about to happen and to get ready! We are about to get just outside our comfort zone where the BEST learning happens! 

When we own our fears, accept them and re-frame them into chance to learn and get better, we can learn to put fear in it’s place! 

The more we can practice pushing ourselves to the edges of our comfort zones by asking questions, doing hard stuff, trying new things, and being resilient when we fail at something, the EASIER it will become for us! 

Fear will NEVER completely leave us so what we must be able to do is learn co-exist with it.  

I’ll close this post today with a letter by author, Liz Gilbert from her book, “Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear"

"Dearest Fear, 

 Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. 

I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. 

I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, 

And that you take your job seriously. 

Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting and may I say you are superb at your job. 

So, by all means, keep doing your job if you feel you must. 

BUT, I will also be doing my job on this road trip, 

Which is to work hard and stay focused 

And creativity will be doing it’s job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. 

There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home,  

But understand this: creativity and I are the ONLY ONES who will be making any decisions along the way. 

I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still, your suggestions will never be followed 

You’re allowed to have a seat, you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.

You’re not allowed to touch the road maps, you’re not allowed to suggest detours, you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio.

But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive!"

I've asked pitchers that train with me to write their own letters to fear. It was really cool to see what they wrote when asked to talk to directly to THEIR FEARS through this assignment.

If you'd like to try this with your athletes, HERE is the worksheet I used with my pitching students.

All My BEST,

Myndie