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Mojo Monday - How to Manage Fear of Failure and Build Psychological Flexibility with Carly Taylor · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Welcome back to another episode of Mojo Monday.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Carly Taylor, and today we're going to tackle a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: topic that he may well be familiar with, and that
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is the fear of failure. So I had many stories
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that I could share that would illustrate this struggle, but
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to share one of them with you today,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and it's about the first time I was invited to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: go on a podcast, and it happened to be an
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: invitation by somebody many of you will be familiar with,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and that is Craig Harper. So those of you who
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: know Craig and have listened to his podcasts or seen
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: him live, Craig is somebody who has this unique gift
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of the gab. He's incredibly smart and articulate even when
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: he swears, and I've got a huge amount of admiration
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: for him. So when I got the invitation, it completely
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: took me by surprise. This was about three years ago,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I think, and I remember getting the text message out
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of the blue and my automatic response was excitement, followed
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: very quickly by complete terror. And I had actually written
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: some goals for the year in my journal and one
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: of them was to be on four podcasts, So this
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: invitation was obviously very aligned with that goal and my
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: purpose around my work, So rationally it was a very
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: positive situation to be in. But then the self doubt
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: kicked in. My inner critic, who was my little gremlin
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: called Martha, went into complete overdrive. What if I go blank?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: What if I'm boring? What if I'm not funny enough
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: because Craig makes people laugh? What if I make a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: fool of myself? Who am I to be on a podcast?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA, YadA yady. Her, my little gremlin, Martha,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: is that part of me that is my perfectionistic, self critical,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: has a deep fear of failure, and it's that part
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of me that crops up in situations like this when
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I'm taking a risk. So looking back, this part of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: me appeared when I was a kid, and Martha back
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: then served a purpose because when I was around age seven,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I remember innocently shaking my head and swinging my pigtails
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: so they hit my face, thinking I was being so funny.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And Megan, who was a girl sitting next to me
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: who I thought was just so pretty and so cool,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and I really really wanted to be friends with her,
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  Speaker 1: gave me this dirty look and told me I was
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: showing off, and she turned away from me. My little
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: heart was broken. So Martha appeared and she gave me
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: some advice. Don't try and be funny because you're not,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and it gets us into trouble and you won't be
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: popular if you keep trying. So you can see how
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: these seemingly insignificant incidents as a child causes this brain
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: wiring that can then stick to stick with you, and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: then it kind of manifests into other areas as you
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: get older. Another childhood experience was feeling like I was
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: never good enough, and I won't go into the detail
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: of that, but I think you get the picture. It's
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that part of us that has this fear of failure
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that maybe served us well at some point in our lives,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like when we were growing up, but not now. But
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it's still there and it can still be really loud.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: So in the past, as an adult, these thoughts might
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: have paralyzed me. I might have delayed responding to the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: text or even politely declined it. But I did say yes.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And this is because of the skills I've learned from ACT,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: which is acceptance, commitment, therapy. If you're not familiar with ACT,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: it is a type of cognitive behavior therapy that helps
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: people build what we call psychological flexibility. So doctor Stephen Hayes,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: who is the founder of ACT, he described psychological flexibility
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: as the ability to feel and think with openness, to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: attend voluntarily to your experience experience of the present moment,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and to move your life in directions that are important
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to you, building habits that allow you to live a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: life accordance with your values and aspirations. So I'll walk
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: through how I applied some of the skills of psychological
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: flexibility to this particular situation, which you could use if
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you are faced with a situation that brings up that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: fear of failure. The first thing I did was I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: observed my reactions with curiosity. So I paused, and I
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: fully experienced the excitement and the fear that came up
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: when I read the text, and I noticed the physical
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: sensations in my body, and I noticed my thoughts. So
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: this is a mindfulness practice observing my thoughts and feelings
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: which creates a bit of emotional distance from them, and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that gives me more control over how I respond. So
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: instead of reacting impulsively, I could choose my reactions more thoughtfully.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: As Martha, my little gremlin, continued to chatter away, I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: felt this urge to start arguing with her. You know
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: when you have that internal argument with yourself, and in
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: other words, I wanted to tell her to shut up.
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  Speaker 1: But I know through this work that arguing with your
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: inner critic actually feels it. You feed the gremlin and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: it grows. So I made room for that discomfort, knowing
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that just like the weather, it will pass, because the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: opportunity to be on the podcast was so much greater
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: than the need to get rid of the discomfort I
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: was feeling. So now I had a bit of distance
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: from my fear and I was able to observe it.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I could ask myself, well, what is important right now?
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  Speaker 1: What is important to me? And that leads me to
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: access and inner compass to guide me in the right direction.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And that compass is my values. So I love coaching people.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I love helping people see beyond their limitations, and I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: love helping people find their strengths. So this was an
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: opportunity to do that. This was so aligned with my
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  Speaker 1: values of helping people, and that was what I used
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  Speaker 1: as my compass to what action that I would take,
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  Speaker 1: not how I was feeling, and given this was an
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  Speaker 1: opportunity aligned with what was important to me, I was
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: able to accept the discomfort make room for it without
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  Speaker 1: trying to change it, without trying to challenge it or
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: get rid of it or reframe it. I allowed it
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  Speaker 1: to be there, but I didn't put my attention on it.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So what I did is I prepared as much as
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I could for a chat with Craig. He is very
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: ad lib so you don't want to prepare too much.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: But if I had an idea of what I could
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: talk about, it helped me build my confidence. Another valuable
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: approach is inspired by Marita therapy, and that emphasizes accepting reality,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: both our internal reality of how we're feeling and what
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: we're thinking, and our external reality, which most of it
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: we don't have control of it, but accepting those as
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: they are and then taking action aligned with your purpose.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: So very very similar to act And one of the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: best pieces of advice that I've read is from Professor
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Takihi Sakora, and that is to leave the unknown to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the unknown. As long as I did a bit of
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: prep the outcome of the podcast, like what people thought
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: of it or what people thought of me was an unknown,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So I turned my attention to then what needed to
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: be done. So you can see how these skills, or
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: through these skills, I was able to respond to my
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: fear of failure with psychological flexibility as opposed to being
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: psychologically rigid. I took on a new challenge. I made
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: room for the fear and the service of something that
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was important to me and was important was aligned with
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: my goals for the year, and it ended up working
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: out pretty well. So next time you have a fear
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of failure and your automatic reaction is to run away,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: try to make room for the discomfort. Pause, notice your thoughts,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: notice the physical sensations, even create a name for your
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: own gremlin, and really get clear on what is important
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: to you, and then do what needs to be done
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: despite how you feel, knowing it will pass and that
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: you will grow from the experience no matter what the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: outcome is. So thank you so much for joining me
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: today on Mojo Monday. I hope you've found this useful
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and until next Monday, accept what you can't change, including
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: your automatic thoughts and emotions, and keep moving forward with purpose.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Have a fantastic week and I will see you next Monday.